To get myself in the mood for its impending horror remake, I took to a viewing of Brian De Palma's Carrie starring Sissy Spacek in the titular role, featuring a delightfully terrifying turn from Piper Laurie as Margeret, Carrie's hyper-religious mother. A definite theme here then, what with Mrs Carmody from The Mist, with Stephen King and his employment of fanatics throughout his work. One thing is certainly clear to me, this is not a horror - at least, not by today's standards. It is definitely a psychological thriller with lashings of the paranormal. However, these lashings are infrequent opposite to how the paraphenalia attributing to the film's cult status would suggest.
It reminds one of the unnerving feeling that The Shining (another King) delivered. Whereas that movie orbited around isolation, hauntings and mental breakdowns, here we see a girl who, timid and bullied, deservedly gains the telekinetic powers she uses to wreak havoc in the film's savage finale.
The story revolves around high school recluse Carrie White. She doesn't have it easy, particularly as she doesn't 'fit in' with her classmates clique and has an overbearingly terrifying mother who preaches passages from the Bible to abolish her daughter's non-existent sinful thoughts and urges. The film is delivered in soft colour tones and is very much one side a high school drama focussing on this terrible time of growing up, where the body changes and teenagers can truly be a fucking nightmare, and on the other side a violent story of revenge that is completely bathed in red.
It begins with Carrie getting her period in the middle of having a shower after gym class. Terrified, and not having any prior knowledge, her classmates poke fun and throw towels at her chanting "Plug it up!". The only individuals rising to her defence are her gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) and Sue (Amy Irving). Miss Collins berates the girls involved with the incident and subjects them to a week of boot-camp style punishment denying their precious prom invitation if they do not attend. Queen bee Chris (played by a sprightly and demure Nancy Allen) is the first to be struck off and decides to plan with dropout boyfriend Billy (a surprise turn from a pre-Saturday Night Fever John Travolta) a way to exact revenge on Carrie at the prom. Sue, however, is wracked with guilt and decides to convince her boyfriend Tommy (William Katt) to invite Carrie to the prom.
Around the White household, however, Carrie realises she is starting to develop telekinetic powers, only displayed when she suffers from bouts of anger or rage. Fruitful then, when punished by her mother. It is throughout these first two acts do we get an inkling of Carrie's power, her wide-eyed and young confusion at what has somehow bestowed itself upon her. It is also here that we see her struggle with becoming a part of the flock that is a desperate want of a high school outcast. Her confidence blossoms and arrives at a crescendo as Tommy asks her to the prom and she is eventually accepted as Prom Queen. William Katt's portrayal of Tommy is heart-wrenchingly sincere, and it really is a delight when Carrie's eyes and smiles light up the screen. But we can see the tense twist in these events coming from the fearful look in Sue's eyes and the delighted grin on Chris' face.
A fantastic use of sound during these final moments is composited here. A bucket of pig's blood pours all over Carrie, stunned and drenched, all we hear is the bucket swinging back and forth after it has delivered it's gory contents. In this silence we see Miss Collins' shock, Tommy's outrage and the class's genuine disbelief. Carrie does not see this, and hears only laughing from everyone from the students to the teachers. Her rage is then displayed. Tommy is knocked out cold by the falling bucket, to which Miss Collins arrives to his aid. Carrie, however, is now wide-eyed and gaunt with concentrated anger.
The lights blow out, the doors are locked, the fire hose sends students drowned or unconscious. The panic and confusion takes place around her, no one in any real belief that Carrie could be causing this. The only one is Miss Collins who, throughout the film has been a surrogate mother of sorts, desperately pleas with her to stop. Carrie, not believing this, immediately impales her. A blaze engulfs the gymnasium and her teachers are electrocuted. Carrie slowly exits the fiery doom of her classmates behind her. All but Sue and Chris are killed.
This entire scene is the moment we have been silently hoping for despite seeing that everything seems to be looking up for Carrie. It's a saddened shame that Tommy will never be able to explain himself, only to be destroyed without prejudice in his unconscious state. Minimalist yet effective in visual effects, the real terror comes from the snap-change appearance in Carrie's character. The red from the blood and the blaze from the hall only making her a force of hellish destruction. She exacts her revenge on the now maniacal Chris in the middle of the road on her way home in a spectacular display involving the destruction of a 1967 Chevelle.
I won't spoil the ending for you, but the destruction doesn't stop there. We even gain an insight into the method behind Margeret's deranged thought process. The climax is one that has certainly inspired plenty of horrors that have come after De Palma's memorable feature. In this day and age, however, one can't help but feel that a remake isn't one to be groaned about but one that needs to be executed. Times in high school change rapidly and the dynamic of the class clique has evolved as time has gone by. This should not be said for every high school drama however, but for one that revolves around the nature of the school bully and victim, there are more tormented ways that teenagers can get away with sending a person overboard in the modern age. One has to simply look at recent headlines where bullies have taken to social media platforms to exact torment on classmates with horrifying results. Whereas I feel the casting of Chloe Grace Moretz in place of Spacek in this year's remake is a little out of touch, as she is rather stunning, I think the delivery will be one of a very topical nature. Its successful execution is paramount if it aims to strike fear in bullies, and one can only hope that is does not disappear like so many previous horror remakes once the year is out.
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