One of the most relevant horror films ever made

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2010)

Based on Stephen King's novel, "Carrie" is a classic horror film directed by Brian DePalma and one of the greatest movies from the 1970's that still echoes in our minds and in the popular culture.
If in many high school themed movies there's always a shy and lonely character who gets abused by everyone in the school and sometimes in the family we owe this characteristic to Carrie White, the main character played by Sissy Spacek. And if we sometimes identify with the tragedy of the character, with a possible chance for revenge the ones who are bad to us, you gotta recognize: you have a part of Carrie inside of you. I don't know how Stephen King idealized this story or his motivations but all I can say is that it works, it scares yet it makes you look at life with a different perspective.
Carrie had a hard religious education at home with her mother (Piper Laurie, excellent) that looks more the devil himself than a woman who preaches the Gospel. And the teenage girl doesn't know how to behave herself during classes at school, or even taking a shower when she finally had her first period (a scene meant to be more dramatically sad than scary, except for the music) and she gets mocked by her colleagues all the time.
The film evolves into a dramatic story but there's a catch. In the middle of the drama we find out that Carrie has special powers, she can move or break objects with the power of her mind, and that's something she can't control quite right and no one knows she has this ability. I'll won't spoil more things, I'm gonna let you see for yourself, but by this time you can possibly know what's the horror in this story.
I must admit I had a total dislike over this film when I watched a few years ago; now I understand why it's an effective and powerful film, and why it was relevant in 1976 and still is today. DePalma released "Carrie" on the same year of many great classics whose major themes were "We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take this anymore!".
Carrie White is no different than Howard Beale ("Network"), Travis Bickle ("Taxi Driver"), Rocky Balboa ("Rocky") and the Woodstein team ("All the President's Men"). Strange mixing of films some might think but if you look back to all these characters and their struggle to challenge everything and everyone, is quite similar from one to another. In the scene where Carrie stood up and says to her mother that she'll go the prom with a boy for the first time in her life you can see the exactly same thing when Howard Beale shouted the most famous movie quote of that year. Gladly all these films were great, and were recognized with nominations and awards, and survived to tell how the American society felt at that time, and "Carrie" even while being a horror movie knew how to be a important piece of filmmaking.
As I mentioned in the beginning most films today has some qualities and characteristics that appeared here for the first time and the way DePalma presented the story was excellent, including homages to his idol Hitchcock (the music by Pino Donaggio reminds some parts of Bernard Herrmann's theme in "Psycho", and by the way Herrmann was the original composer of the music of the film but died a few months before the filming begin). Not only the music, but the editing is also great, and one of the most awaited moments is the prom night, there are thousand of things in that scene that keeps you thrilled all the time, no matter how many times you watch. And at last the great casting composed by Spacek, Laurie, John Travolta, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen and Betty Buckley, all wonderful.
It's a very interesting horror film but more than that it is a historical study (in terms of film) over a period. 10/10