Carrie White is an unpopular 16-year-old girl who was raised by her religious-fanatic mother. When Carrie gets her first period in the showers of her high school locker room, she doesn’t know what is happening to her, and is mocked mercilessly by the other girls. As punishment for their bullying, gym teacher Miss Collins places the whole class on a week-long detention. The girls react differently to the punishment—Sue Snell feels remorseful and encourages her handsome boyfriend to invite Carrie to the prom as an act of inclusion, whereas popular girl “Chris” Hargensen hatches an evil prank on Carrie. Meanwhile, the oppressed Carrie realizes that she has telekinetic powers and studies her newfound abilities. At the prom, Chris rigs the Prom Queen election in favor of Carrie and when Carrie is onstage to receive her title, Chris dumps a bucket of pig-blood all over her. This hateful act snaps Carrie into a telekinetic fit and she begins attacking everyone at the prom, locking the gym doors and burning the place down. With her new strength, Carrie is forced to confront her wretched mother, destroying the White household and leaving Sue, the lone survivor of the event, with deep trauma.
“Carrie” is a creepy, possibly-empowering(?) tale of a young woman finding her power, but is kind of a one-trick pony. With no prior knowledge of the story going in, I still knew that the prom scene was coming (it’s literally on the movie poster). It’s like watching “Psycho” for the first time and knowing about the shower scene. And yet, unlike “Psycho”, which still has two acts of story after the water twirls down the drain, “Carrie” sort of has nowhere to go after the prom scene. The poor, sympathetic Carrie is persecuted for her womanhood by students and her mother. But with womanhood comes newfound strength, embodied in her telekinesis, and she uses her growth to punish those who wronged her. I don’t know if that’s an empowering story, or a platform for Stephen King/Brian De Palma to share their take on female pettiness and vengefulness. Either way, “Carrie” was a mostly entertaining story and I give it three buckets of blood.