An anti-bullying PSA that is occasionally a solid abuser revenge horror movie. Sissy Spacek carries the entire film, giving an incredible performance as a broken, terrified teenager just trying to prevent further harm. Every scene where she is desperately pleading with her abusers is horribly raw and tragic, outlining a character who is so used to being hurt it informs every social interaction she has. Even as her tormenters are cartoon religious zealous and teen supervillains, Spacek captures a specific image of vulnerable adolescence that transcends the goofy situations the plot requires.
The prom sequence IS Carrie, and an incredible juxtaposition of teen comedy bliss with the inevitable, grotesque prank at the end. It's the rare instance where De Palma's particular brand of excess actually works, pulling at tropes that would later calcify with John Hughes. I wish Carrie's attack was a little less slapstick as the violence is lessened somewhat by an over emphasis on her telekinesis, but it's extremely cathartic all the same.
The other 70 minutes though, kinda a mess. As I'm coming to expect from De Palma, there's a ton of half articulated ideas here without the space to develop. The teacher disciplining the bullies for half the movie is shot like a bootcamp training montage, with seemingly no interest in considering that maybe a teacher screaming and hitting teenagers is also kinda fucked up even if they are pieces of shit. A later scene where Chris and Billy are arguing and Billy keeps hitting her comes to an absurd head when ultimately Chris is in control and goes down on him for a favor (I'm guessing the idea was a "they're made for each other" thing, but this is charged imagery without any thoughts behind it). Also not sure why we needed a softcore showering montage at the beginning, really uncomfortable emphasis on naked teen girls throughout (despite the movie really not being about sex at all, despite the inciting incident of a period).
Every scene with Carrie's mother swings wildly between blunt domestic abuse and a caricature of what people assume religious parents are like. I can't blame this entirely on the movie as it's fully a Steven King special, but it's so over the top (the dinner scene is mostly an exception, and I wish there were more moments showing what Carrie's domestic life is like outside her mother's outbursts).
Almost every scene would be improved by a less aggressive score, which repeatedly turns this into a silent film and overwhelms any emotion the image itself might produce. It's a different form of soundtrack excess than what we're now subjected to from Netflix, but a similar impulse to never let the audience be alone with their thoughts. It's fine, actually, movies are not balletes.
Last minute jump scare did get me. Fuck Sue. No redemption for any of these assholes.
Content warnings: bullying, blood, animal abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, death by electricution/fire/impalement