Carrie

Year: 1976

Grade: A

Country: USA

Director: DePalma

Review

Been a long time since I watched this and an even longer time since I read the book. It’s considered a horror classic for good reason and it shows how good horror films can be. It’s a shame more of the intelligentsia don’t take the genre seriously.

At its core it’s about a girl coming of age and man’s inhumanity to man. In the #metoo era we’re considering the importance of women and their role in cinema, society, and everything else. Here we have a film that shows a host of very rich female characters. The teacher who is well-intentioned and helpful and the kind motherly presence Carrie needs. The birth mother who is a horrid religious bitch. The alpha female who uses her weak boyfriend to rig the blood that spills on Carrie and her connections to rig the vote that gets Carrie on the stage in the first place. Then there’s the alpha’s former friend who pushes back against her cruelty and tries to help Carrie by having her boyfriend take Carrie to the prom. All the men are pawns – it’s a woman’s world.

DePalma and King capture perfectly the ways in which we are so cruel to each other and it’s a profoundly depressing movie. Don’t be an asshole.