30 in 30: A MONTH OF HORROR. CARRIE

DAY 11

CARRIE (1976)

Being a teenager was a horror show.

CARRIE is a similar movie in many ways to ROSEMARY’S BABY. They both deal with changes in the human body, they both have isolated female protagonists, and they are both about control. But where ROSEMARY’S BABY is about the absolute loss of it, CARRIE is about the sudden and total gain of it.

CARRIE is an exploration of the way we humans exercise control and power. What could happen if you gave super powers to an angry and broken teenager?

The classic De Palma film is scary because it’s an exaggeration of the changes our bodies go through during puberty. This is something we all have or will experience. The relationship between you and your body is somewhat fractured during your teenage years. And if you think about it just by itself, puberty can be a pretty horrifying thing.

But CARRIE is not just about puberty right? Let’s see what happens in the film with this summary:

CARRIE is about a timid and sheltered girl, who has been relentlessly bullied by her classmates and emotionally and physically abused by her zealot mother. Once Carrie discovers she has telekinetic powers, a cruel joke played by her classmates will turn a school dance into a literal bloodbath.

What I find particularly interesting about this film is that we create empathy with the eventual monster of the story. Carrie’s classmates are horrible people who have been torturing her through her high school years; her mother is a crazy overly religious woman who smothers Carrie until there’s nothing left of her own identity. Pain helps us connect with her, which helps us understand her actions at the end of the film. But do we share them? Do you want the bullies to die?

The novel on which the film is based on was written by horror maestro Stephen King, who wrote it while he was an English teacher at a high school. I think this translates very well into the film. King got to see how teenagers interact with each other on a daily basis, and even though I think (and hope) that the situations that happen in this film have been somewhat exaggerated and dramatized, they still feel emotionally true to those of us who still remember walking around the halls of our high school. Teenagers can be incredibly cruel and smart in the way they inflict that cruelty.

But at the end, the teenagers (at least for me) end up being the victims of their mischiefs, and of the story in general.

Carrie gains control of her powers but loses control over herself, she then murders almost the entire school in a scene brilliantly directed by De Palma.

But even though I understand why she does it, I can’t help but feel horrified while she’s doing it.
I don’t feel any vicarious sense of justice while the murders are taking place. I just feel like a horrible tragedy is happening.

To me, this movie is scary because I get to see glimpses of the mind of someone who could do something really terrible inside a school.

It’s haunting because it teaches us that sometimes we create the monsters that end up chasing us.

Tomorrow: VERONICA (2017)

Yesterday: ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)