A Landmark of the Horror Genre...

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2017)

The mark of great horror movies is to depict horror visually and tacitly, when the anticipation and the non-action make your heart pound more than any slashing. For all its abundance of hemoglobin, "Brian de Palma's "Carrie" is never as haunting and effective as when it deals with the brutality endured by its titular characters. For "Carrie" is a deep and emotionally involving portrait of a tormented creature, whose power is finally, fully expressed when she's the victim of the "one prank too many" at the moment that could have been the time of her life. Everyone knows the iconic picture of blood-soaked Sissy Spacek, but also her dazzling smile while holding flowers during her prom coronation, that's the duality of Carrie and the secret of her appeal.
Through his breakthrough best-selling novel, Stephen King painted, in bold red letters, a much fascinating portrait of a shy, insecure girl like we all knew in high-school, an easy target for more confident, popular and (although not a rule) prettier girls. This is clearly established in the first shot where, after having missed a ball during volleyball game, she gets insulted and hit by her schoolmates. Looking at Sissy Spacek's innocent look, I felt an instant empathy toward that poor creature. I was bullied in school, athletics weren't my strongest suit, and while I wasn't as shy as Carrie, I was certainly below the line of popularity, so I knew all too well what she was going through.
But Carrie is an even more excessive case, she doesn't even realize that she's having her first period during the following shower. That a girl so advanced in age didn't even anticipate her physiological changes is suspicious and worries Mrs. Collins, her comprehensive gym teacher who finds the right words and gesture to appease her panic attack. We start having a few glimpses of Carrie, when the principal misquotes her name; an ashtray starts shaking and then literally jumps when he shouts. A similar incident occurs when a kid teasing her falls from his bike, there's a sort of catch underneath Carrie's seemingly submissive personality. She's not your typical target. The film doesn't try to be a character study but works all the same.
At home, Carrie's mother confronts her, she's a bigoted Christian played by a convincingly scary Piper Laurie. At the very knowledge that her daughter has the curse, Margaret throws a tantrum on her and asks her to pray God for forgiveness. She's a scary woman but she reveals a lot about Carrie especially that behind every weak personality, there's a controlling and dominant parent believing in his/her good intentions. Carrie's soul is the soul of her mother's obsessions, but it had such a traumatic effect on Carrie that it shaped the two defining aspects of her personality: shyness and a 'power' revealing itself to be 'telekinesis. In King's oeuvre, power is always at the hands of vulnerable people and that's why King's books and adaptations are so successful.
But "Carrie" also benefits from Brian De Palma's directing, flashy when it's called for to emphasize the suddenness of the scary outbursts with the use of Bernard Herrman's violin score from "Psycho", but there is a fine balance between stylish moments and quieter ones. And on the basis of these moments where the teacher confronts the girls, when she helps Carrie to feel better and to take care of her face, for these touching interactions with Tommy, the prettiest guy in school, I liked "Carrie". This is not your typical 'all flash and no substance' horror movie, as no flashiness, no nudity, no extreme violence or sexuality ever feels gratuitous. Spacek makes Carrie so real the realism exceeds her fragile aura and affects the film, positively.
And while De Palma paid a remarkable tribute to his master Hitchcock, there's a dimension of sweetness and romance that weren't known as Hitchcock's trademarks. So in its own right, this is great romance culminating at the prom. The dance sequence is nothing short but a masterpiece of filmmaking, a moment where Carrie still doesn't realize that this is happening, but Tommy finds the perfect words to reassure her. The camera turns around them and the pace accelerates until it gets vertiginous as if De Palma deliberately accentuated the dizziness of Carrie, as if she was intoxicated by her euphoria. It is just too good to be true, but as viewers, we want to believe it, and as long as it takes for Carrie to get on the stage, to smile, to see people smiling back, to receive the flowers, we savor every moment of that before it all gets downhill.
This is one of these instances where you almost wish there would be no movie, for Carrie's sake. This is how powerfully and patiently our empathy was built and how the climax, as brutal and blindly violent as it was (many victims weren't even laughing at Carrie) shows that sometimes, violence is out of control, it starts when an innocent life is brutalized but as a consequence, many other innocent lives can be swept out. In the case of Carrie, vengeance was a dish served immediately, all in a flashy red, one of the film's leitmotifs, and the climax is still now, a staple of modern horror movies and an indicator that the 70's were a terrific decade in every level.
And it also works on a slightly pervert level, as we all feel somewhat satisfied when some of the bullies get their comeuppance, no matter how extreme they are, then the fact that innocents die too reminds us that one should not cheer for violence and accept that bullies can be victims and victim can be bullies, although in the case of Carrie, a very extreme type. It seems reliant on voyeuristic and manipulative tricks but when you look closer, it's far beyond these clichés and respects the viewers' intelligence more than your usual horror flicks.