At Seventeen

Rating: Null/10 (2 December 2009)

Living every high school kid's worst nightmare, homely Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) knows a thing or two about rejection, about adolescent trauma. Carrie is the personification of the haunting lyrics in Janis Ian's classic song "At Seventeen", popular at the same time as this film. "To those of us who knew the pain of valentines that never came", words that convey a deeply felt theme of those awkward teenage years, a theme that is emotional and potentially scarring for life.
Unlike the lack of recourse in the song lyrics, however, Carrie has a secret weapon, special powers reserved for her tormentors. But in using these powers, she morphs into a kind of female Darth Vader, slaying not just the bad and the ugly, but the good, too. It's this wielding of "supernatural" powers that puts the film in the horror genre, and which likewise, turns me off.
For my taste, everything about this production is too over-the-top: the characters, the plot, the dialogue, the acting. Using extreme lighting and camera angles, the visuals are so souped-up and Gothic as to imply some kind of grand opera. Exaggeration is the hallmark of this film. If it is meant as satire, I didn't find any of it funny.
Playing the title role, Sissy Spacek carries "Carrie". Any other actress in the role probably would have doomed the film, its deep theme notwithstanding. Her facial expressions with those buggy eyes, and her overall body language, especially during the fright night prom sequence, render indelible visuals.
One of the more respected horror films, "Carrie" gets points from me for its deeply felt theme and for the performance of Sissy Spacek. Otherwise, the film, like others in its genre, lacks any degree of subtlety or realism, and therefore does not interest me, beyond general curiosity.