"Everybody will laugh at you!"

Rating: 9/10 (27 January 2001)

It's funny how 5 words can mean so much to a person. I will never forget the image of this pale girl, with a look on her face of horror, embarassment, shame and raw emotion, covered in blood and through her eyes, the whole gymnasium, stands and laughs heartlessly at her humiliation.
Carrie was a landmark for me, as I'm sure it was for a certain Mr King. It displayed for the whole world to see that school,(high school, secondary school) could actually be hell. In my mind Sissy Spacek was born to play Carrie White. She encapsulated all the emotions and feelings so well, your heart couldn't help but go out to her. In my mind this is a horror, but not in the sense of Carrie White's telekinesis, but of life, and of the people in it. Those who just wanna push things that little bit too far, for some nondescript reason. The girls squealing for Carrie to "plug it up" when she gets her first period and has no idea what it is, and when they start throwing tampons at her, is alot more frightening than most of the episodes of Carrie's telekinesis,(with the exception of the 2 final incidents). Piper Laurie's excellent portrayal of the religiously fanatical Magaret White, her determination that Carrie is first dirty and polluted which eventually gives way to her belief that Carrie is evil, is disturbing viewing especially considering that at the crux of this all, Carrie is her child. A WORD OF WARNING: De Palma's version differs from Stephen Kings novel, however that does not make it bad, since the initial essence is there. Carrie is an unfortunate victim of circumstance, trapped in a world that she does not control, one thread that is evident in both the film and the novel is that Carrie's ultimate empowerment and her decision (arguably based on instinct and reaction)to initiate it, leads to destruction of the town and finally of herself, but throughout the whole thing she remains, unsure and often even unaware.
Carrie is a victim you care about and you understand the revenge she exacts upon her classmates and the redeemed Sue Snell(Amy Irving), however, you get the feeling that Snell's attempts to bring Carrie happiness is slightly a case of trying to forgive herself for descending into madness in the girls locker room.
The final scene (one of the best classic endings of a film ever:discuss!?) is a final triumph for Carrie, her final revenge, her gift to Sue Snell, her legacy. But throughout the whole film, never was this more a case of just an innocent victim of circumstance. A triumph for King and De Palma, (plus a chance for De Palma to home his skills down, in particular his trademark split screen filming). If any parent ever said life was easy for kids, sit them down and make them watch Carrie.