Those who came to know and love horror movies during the 1980s or 1990s might have difficulty with Carrie. Here’s a movie in which – at the one-hour mark – nobody has been dismembered, skewered or beheaded. No monster – save poor Carrie’s lunatic religious freak mother (Piper Laurie) – has appeared. People accustomed to the horror = slasher = ‘guts and gore from the first moment’ formula might just feel let down. After all, this is supposed to be a horror classic. To borrow a 1980s advertising line, where’s the beef?
The answer is simple. Like in other horror movies that successfully cross the line into big-time thriller territory – Jaws, which came out a year earlier than Carrie comes to mind – the ‘beef’ doesn’t come in the form of a huge body count, gore aplenty or buckets of blood (we do at least get one of those). The ‘beef’ comes in the form of foreboding that envelops this film from its first moment. This is horror in the classic sense, horror that builds rather than constantly shocking or disgusting, horror that works so well we don’t need a guts and gore booster-shot every two minutes.
Based on Stephen King’s first novel, this is the story of Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), resident reject-nerd at Bates High School (if that’s not intended to be a Psycho reference, then the music score during the film’s climactic moments most certainly is). Following a more-than-slightly exploitative post-gym class locker room scene that features plenty of naked young female bodies and a slow-mo image of Carrie washing herself, we learn that she’s a late-bloomer and the onset of a woman’s bodily cycle shocks her and inspires her classmates to abuse her viciously. Things are no better at home, as her single mother is a proselytizing Christian lunatic who abuses Carrie both physically and emotionally. But Carrie deals has special powers – telekinetic abilities that cause furniture to move, light bulbs to burst and all manner of other things to be affected purely through the power of her mind. And when high school bullies decide to subject her to the ultimate prom night indignity, Carrie deals with it in a way they’d never imagine.
The storyline is pretty campy stuff, but director Brian De Palma’s execution of it – save that embarrassingly cheesy locker room scene – is right on the mark. The intense scenes are well done – complete with De Palma’s trademark use of split screen to exaggerate the intensity – but it’s the build-up that makes Carrie a horror classic. He takes his time, allowing Carrie’s indignities to pile up before the inevitable explosion happens. And he does it without resorting to any of the usual horror movie false alarms or other clichés.
Spacek’s performance also deserves great credit. She so fits the part of a shy reject that it hurts to watch. And when things finally explode, she is able to be the bearer of huge destruction while still seeming to be an innocent. It’s remarkable.
Horror in the classic sense, horror that builds rather than constantly shocking, horror that works so well we don’t need a guts and gore booster-shot every two minutes.
