Gauzy photography, ‘cool’ slang and clothes, distracting split-screen climax and a tone that’s over-heated cheese. The aesthetic qualities of Carrie are stuck in the time period when the film was made. The story has been retold a few times, mostly to create a more timeless version of the story, but none of them can so much as be in conversation with the original because Brian De Palma whips everything into an unforgettable stylistic frenzy while Sissy Spacek nails it deep into emotional concrete.
Spacek is painfully convincing as a teenager too repressed to express herself who becomes Cinderella for a brief time before… well you probably know what happens. It’s a rare case where there’s no mystery where things are headed, and that’s probably a good thing, because it’s comforting to know that after sitting through the Hell that is Carrie White’s life, she will bring that Hell literally to everyone around her. Carrie takes many elements you would find in misery porn and delivers an incredibly satisfying, transgressive and sometimes shocking tale of supernatural revenge.
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