Carrie

CARRIE is a problematic film, one that has a great beginning, great middle, and an end which is so atrocious, is repurposes the previously great segments, and ruins the film. Directed by the occasionally unwieldy, but talented Brian de Palma, CARRIE is a simple horror story, but its artful and creepy in its opening. de Palma begins with Carrie, an outcast at school and daughter to a religious nut, naked in the locker room at school. Many directors have started their films with blatant female nudity (see: PLEASE GIVE), but it acts as a pretentious precursor to a pretentious film. de Palma's decision to start the film this way is sort of brilliant though. Carrie looks like a naked animal, like a cat shaved and thrown in water. She's bony and creepy (played with real knowledge by Sissy Spacek), and while in the shower, she reaches down between her legs and her fingers come up blood tinged. Because of her idiot mother, Carrie (who is a senior in high school) doesn't even know about periods, and past the obvious creepiness of a stunted puberty, Carrie runs at her fellow seniors, bloody fingers outstretched like a mad creature. Her classmates laugh at her and humiliate her, and this sets up de Palma's world as an immoral creature itself. Even the teacher who pities Carrie is at heart just as disgusted with her, but acts towards her in kind gestures just to prove a point to herself. Then the horror bit sets in, and we discover that Carrie has the power of telekinesis. This changes her life, and she is even asked out by the only goodhearted person in the film to the prom as a pity-gesture. Despite these motives, de Palma creates a great sequence here, showing Carrie and the boy dancing round and round as his camera follows them round and round. There is a plot at work though, for the girls from earlier plan to humiliate Carrie by dousing her in pig's blood. Carrie is now beautiful at the Prom: her face is clean and scintillating, but we know that it will soon be stained by pig's blood. Then de Palma fucks up. In the last scenes of the movie, he throws all of these wonderful ideas out the window, Carrie goes batshit crazy, and we've lost any true beauty or true horror to pretentious camera tricks, confusing and unnecessary split screens, and yells. Any animalism that existed, and quasi-Cinderella horror story that de Palma set up is ruined. For me, CARRIE is one of the saddest failures I've ever seen, because it had so much potential. Turn off the film right when Carrie gets doused in blood and you've got a really fine film, but that is not the case, and as a whole, de Palma makes CARRIE not work. A real shame.
Carrie: ★★1/2