Carrie - The scoop and digest

Along with The Exorcist and The Omen, Carrie has long since cemented its place as being one of the landmark horrors of all time.

For anybody who remains curious, The Rage: Carrie 2 was predictably HORRENDOUS and deservedly a commercial failure.

Ignoring 2002 TV movie, Director Kimberly Peirce has some ‘balls’ in touching the untouchable.

Plot details and/or spoilers will be drenched in pig’s blood.

Mind over matter includes:

Chloe Grace Moretz – Carrie

Julianne Moore – Margaret

Judy Greer – Miss Desjardin

Gabriella Wilde – Sue

Portia Doubleday – Chris

Alex Russell – Billy

Ansel Elgort - Tommy

We begin at the White residence in 1995 as Margaret struggles with the agony of childbirth.

After conceiving, she grabs a pair of scissors but decides against killing the infant.

This is a miracle in more ways than one as there is no umbilical cord.

Eighteen years later...

Carrie is begrudgingly forced to involve herself in a game of water volleyball with a crowd including Chris Hargensen and Sue Snell.

When she fluffs her serve, Chris issues the famous line of “You eat shit.”

While showering, Carrie is confused and frightened as what turns out be her first period begins.  When asking for help, she’s told to ‘plug it up, plug it up’ and is cruelly showered with tampons.

Chris films the whole distressing affair on her smartphone.

Margaret is contacted by Miss Desjardin who takes Carrie home and locks her estranged daughter in a closet to pray for forgiveness as she believes going through puberty is a sin.

Hysterical and menstrual, the door suffers a splitting headache.

Desjardin scolds Chris and co for the ‘really shitty’ stunt they pulled by forcing the punishment of detention by exercise and for anybody who doesn't comply, is refused entry to the upcoming Prom.

Run bitches run.  Come on, keep those knees up.

While the others accept the chance to lose a few pounds, Chris decides to overturn the decision with an empty protest.

Hargensen is out of the Prom but this isn’t over, this isn’t over by a long shot.

Chris plots her revenge with Billy Nolan and uploads ‘Bloody Mary’ to the internet.

I’ve heard farts with more originality.

Meanwhile, Miss White practices the ability to move objects purely by the power of the mind.

With guilt nibbling away at her conscience, Sue asks boyfriend Tommy Ross to take Carrie to the Prom.

Desjardin is naturally suspicious but Sue and Tommy manage to convince that their intentions are honourable.

When Mummy doesn’t share her daughter’s elation of her special invite, she demonstrates that the mind can be deadlier than physical force...

Have you seen the little Piggies playing in the dirt?

No? The White Album and The Beatles should help...

Anyway, Chris and Billy smash some Babe and acquire enough blood meaning their diabolical plan is beyond the pail.

Have no fear; the night of the prom is here.

After final preparations, the sight of her dirty pillows are brought into question.

Margaret is given a dose of her own medicine as she becomes the victim of compressed space and early parole is not assured.

Amidst this spat between mother and daughter, Tommy has already arrived in a shiny limousine.  Suffice to say, Cinderella will go to the ball with her unexpected Prince Charming.

The climax should be flushed quicker than a drugs bust.

Prom results are rigged, the bucket is, albeit reluctantly pulled and guess who takes an early shower?

This time, funny bones are tickled when the video is transferred to the big screen.

Shortly after Tommy kicks the bucket, doors shut, the lights go off, the situation ignites and she ‘flies’.

What?  You have to be shitting me, right?

To quote Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie in cult horror The Wicker Man:

“O, God!  O, Jesus Christ!”

During the ‘excitement’, she ensures Desjardin lives.

In the aftermath, Carrie follows Billy and Chris as they flee in their automobile.

A stomp later sends a crack wider than a builder’s bum down the highway.

With no choice but to spin this crate around, they notice Carrie up ahead.  Chris gives the order to kill and Billy steps on it.

Telekinesis forces an emergency stop and Billy never gets the chance to claim compensation for whiplash.

Carrie toys with Chris before tossing the car into a petrol station.

Windscreen wins, head loses.  Just to make sure, Carrie turns up the heat.

Arriving home, she notices that her mother has escaped.

Cheer up baby girl; things are always better after a soak in the bath...

Margaret confronts her and strikes sharply, but is ‘prevented’ from delivering the killer blow as sharp objects are soon forcefully plunged into her body.

As the insane aggressor exhales her last breath, Sue appears and courtesy of the Ken Loach film Raining Stones, the house starts to crumble .  Through telepathy, she tells Sue ‘it’s a girl’ who then launches her to safety.

Sue recounts the tale in court and after leaving a flower at Carrie’s gravestone, granite cracks and we hear a scream from beyond the grave.

Oh, some stupid rock music plays to the credits.

My seat was quickly vacated and left the cinema bubbling with rage.

Let’s scrape the bottom of a decrepit barrel and find limited positives.

It must be appreciated that in terms of dialogue and scenes, much is lifted from the book.

Examples include acts of ‘intimacy’ between Tommy and Sue, Chris’s father and the ‘cancer’ of Carrie’s birth.

Just like the horror short, two buckets are better than one.

For some reason, De Palma renamed the teacher Collins instead of Desjardin, but the others remain.  The death of Margaret and Carrie were also radically different.

Understandably, this was left out but the ballot ends in a tie with sixty-three votes for Frank Grier and Jessica MacLean, and sixty-three votes for Thomas Ross and Carrie White.  They win in a run-off ballot.

As Peirce simmers the soup, she rings the changes but still lack the necessary clout of what went before.

Shortly after the shower scene, an ashtray isn't flipped but instead, a water bottle from a dispenser springs a leak.

The pig is sledged repeatedly by Billy and changed to a single blow from boyfriend Billy with Chris slitting its throat.

She smashes the mirror at home but here, it happens at school.

The boy teases ‘Crazy’ rather than ‘Creepy’ Carrie.

Reverting back to classic, Carrie kills Chris and Billy in a less protracted manner.

The control of the wheel is reversed and after seeing Carrie stagger in a hypnotic state, Chris hopes to scrape her off her front tyre but the vehicle is ‘forced’ to swerve and TK talent completes an explosive comeuppance.

It was a sensible decision as I'm sure the effect of throwing a car in 1976 was a bridge too far.

Putting literary comparison aside, this is a straight shoot out between what succeeds better as a film.

To sweep up any confusion, this piece of shit was a despairingly shambolic train wreck.

Chris is meant to be an unlikable bitch and unlike Nancy Allen, didn't come naturally for Doubleday as her performance at best, was amateurish.

Billy and Tommy fare no better and deliver fractious inconsistency.

Sue was fair to crap, the teacher made hard work of sympathy and while Julianne Moore is the pick of a haphazard bunch, she remains only an adequate replacement for Piper Laurie’s fanatical contribution.

What angers most is the titular char herself.

Gone is the plain and inexperienced, say hi to the fair of face and confident.

Okay, Sissy Spacek wasn't an identical clone as although gaunter and profusely shy, she wasn't corpulent and riddled with acne.

The same extends to Margaret who, ‘had a face like the ass-end of a truck and a body to match’.

In the right circumstances, liberties can be taken...

It isn't a case of Get Shorty, but Get Baffled as Hit Girl appears to be ‘aroused’ by utilising mind control.

Peirce’s last chance to salvage minuscule pride was attending the Prom but fucking that up was naturally a given.

When the King and Queen are receiving applause on stage, there is simply little or no suspense before and during the inevitable bucket tip.

Rewinding the splash several times to apparently make the effect more dramatic displays embarrassing desperation.

Pino Donaggio’s powerful compositions are replaced by a dire selection of banality.

Attempting X-Men, or more so Chronicle (which stole heavily from Akira), is an act of drunken lunacy.

As a comedic example, before passing a mutated holo-virus onto Rimmer through radio waves, Dr Hildegarde Lanstrom of Red Dwarf V fame was able to exploit similar powers including telepathy and hex vision.

Mr Flibble says "Game over boys!"

Dead Space and Kinesis could also be referenced in pixels, but that’s just me going too far.

The portrayal of a tormented individual who understandably snaps and becomes mass murderess was brilliantly realised by Spacek who because of this, didn't need to gesticulate like a twisted politician.

As climaxes go, you are left with nothing apart from the feeling of exasperation.

Even the TV movie was done better, which also retained the stopping of Margaret's heart

It’s well documented that Stephen King hated Kubrick’s vision of The Shining and while I’m unsure if the original satisfied his needs; God only knows what he thought of this interpretation.

The Bee Gees warbled ‘Tragedy’ in their own inimitable style and I condemn this as another.

Which much revered classic is up next to be butchered?

Oh yeah, the already 'delayed' Robocop.

Like a zombie feasting on flesh, I’ll pick the whole depressing situation to pieces.