Certainly an outcast from her high school peeps thanks in part to her mother’s overbearing nature (due to her own mother’s failure), Carrie White finds her loneliness consuming her. When her high school so-called chums decide to set her up for the ultimate bad prank, namely getting her to win the prom queen position only to humiliate her, she gets the last laugh at their expense. Rule one of teasing, make sure that the person you’re teasing isn’t masterful in the art of telekinesis. The prom, at the end, certainly has the house brought down on it.
Looking back, from a distance, Carrie is a very odd-ball movie. When you see the first few scenes you’re thinking this is probably a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. De Palma sets you up into thinking that Carrie is just a normal teenage girl. He disrupts the perfect view with the first terrible introduction to her entire persona in one small scene… she gets her period in the school shower. Her reaction defines Carrie White. She screams, she is incredibly confused and no one offers to help her; rather they offer to ridicule her. Even the teacher doesn’t really help, just gets her out of the situation in one of the most embarrassing manners. In this single scene the movie shows how complicated and delicate Carrie’s situation is and already establishes how far she’s been pushed already through an example of her telekinesis (destroying a lightbulb in the shower). This sort of introduction is perfect and gets the film going in so many ways. The build that Lawrence D. Cohen writes from Stephen King’s novel only helps De Palma put together a roller coaster ride that ends in disaster, yet a pleasant disaster (in a sick way). This is truly what makes the horror of the movie come out. All of the build and the characters banning together to make Carrie’s life hell for no reason, only to come to a sticky conclusion makes this perfect for the horror genre.
Where the film stumbles a bit is that the cast wasn’t truly prepared, other than Sissy Spacek, for this type of film. There is a good amount of overacting which just harms the movie in so many different ways. Even Spacek is a bit much as Carrie, but definitely not as extreme in overacting as someone as John Travolta’s Billy Nolan (oye, he wasn’t quite up to par at this point of his career). This is the only complaint I have with Carrie.
As for the clean-up HD job that 20th Century Fox/MGM did on the film, it looks pretty darn good. I think I’ve seen older films with a bit more ‘umph’ to the HD visuals, but this certainly isn’t the worst I’ve seen. Is it worth the price for pretty good HD? I think so, especially if you want a film that truly transforms a Stephen King novel into something decent (those are far and few between). As for the audio, it’s haunting on Blu-ray, so much so that you will be guaranteed to jump. This is why I love Blu-ray and horror films, it makes you want to just jump out of your seat, even if the film is good or bad. Most people, especially some folks that I know close to the site, don’t get this. They don’t understand why HD video/audio make the experience better, you’ll just have to give it a go to understand. Good job on it, though.
Regretfully, there are no features other than the theatrical trailer. That’s not really a feature though. Too bad there wasn’t more.