Carrie (1976) Review

"Sin never dies."

-Margaret White

Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is a high school outcast who is relentlessly picked on.  After one particularly cruel incident, Sue Snell (Amy Irving) has an attack of guilty conscience.  She gets her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (William Katt), to take Carrie to prom and show her a good time.  Unfortunately, some of the students are planning a prank on Carrie, but none of them know Carrie is actually telekinetic and their ignorance will prove fatal...

What Works:

The character of Carrie White is truly fantastic.  She's very relatable and easy to root for.  The poor girl never had a chance.  Not only is she bullied at school, but her mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie) is emotionally and physically abusive.  Carrie has a wonderful, but tragic character arc.  We see her grow and stand up to her mother, only for everything to collapse around her.  It's horrible, but very compelling.

Sissy Spacek does an excellent job as Carrie.  I'm so glad she was nominated for Best Actress.  It's very rare for horror movies to get nominated and Spacek deserved it.  She keeps Carrie's quirks, but still manages to make her likable and grounded.

Piper Laurie was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Margaret White and rightfully so.  She is fantastic as Carrie's religiously fanatic mother.  She is utterly brutal and horrible, but Laurie's performance is fantastic and it's incredibly easy to hate her.

The prom sequences is, of course, iconic.  It's suspenseful with some masterful cinematography.  It's such a cruel and terrifying sequences of events, but the end product is extremely successful.  I love this sequence, especially with all the split-screens.  It shows just how chaotic this incident was without it getting confusing.

I read the book before watching the movie, so I knew what was going to happen.  I think that actually helps the film.  You know that this is going to end very badly and that makes watching Carrie and Tommy at prom so much more difficult.  They are having a great time and Carrie is actually happy for once, but you know the bucket of blood is there waiting for her and that makes watching these scenes all the more tragic.

Finally, the movie changes a few things from the book for the better.  The final event of the book is Carrie vs. Billy (John Travolta) and Chris (Nancy Allen), but in the movie the final event is Carrie vs. Margaret.  That is a much more fitting ending to Carrie's arc in my opinion.  The conflict between her and her mother is much more interesting than Billy and Chris' "revenge" plot.  Margaret's death is also much stronger in the movie.  In the book, Carrie just stops her heart, but here she gets crucified with a bunch of knives.  It's more satisfying and visually interesting this way.

What Sucks:

I only have one complaint with Carrie and that comes from the moment where Carrie and Tommy start dancing.  We get an extremely long shot of the camera spinning in circles around the dancing couple.  It lasts so long and actually made me dizzy and nauseous.  In the behind-the-scenes, I saw that some of the crew members got sick filming this shot.  This is a sweet moment between these characters, we shouldn't be getting nauseous from it.  I'm all for stylish cinematography, but it shouldn't distract from the story and this was incredibly distracting.

Verdict:

Carrie is an excellent film and also an excellent adaptation of the book.  It's full of great characters and incredible performances.  This a tragedy done right and the changes from the book serve the purpose of the film.  I really hate that spinning shot, but apart from that, Carrie has absolutely got it going on.

 9/10: Great