A Fresh Look at Carrie

So today I was having a rather difficult "lady time". (There. Now everyone on the internet can chart my menstrual cycle). In an attempt to cheer myself up a bit I went on the television ordering films thingy and found the perfect choice: Carrie (1976). It’s all about a girl who’s life starts going terribly wrong when she gets her period so I thought it would be apropos.

Now here’s what’s weird: I remember when I saw the film way way way back in the day that it was really scary. It gave me nightmares as I recall, and Carrie was really demonic. Now, seeing it this many years later and in my particular “state” I see that she wasn’t demonic at all – she was just misunderstood. She was just super sensitive and everyone was giving her a hard time. So she was a little socially inept? Did those high school bitches really need to expend all that energy terrorizing her? I mean for crying out loud, on top of all the usual teenage angst, she had a completely unsupportive mother.....



......who had to make creepy comments about her prom dress right as she was on her way out the door (”Dirty Pillows!!”), then she goes to the prom, actually starts to have a good time and is just being validated as Prom Queen...



...when some stupid high school chick has to dump a bucket of blood on her and ruin everything.



By the time the slow motion falling bucket had hit her date in the head, I was crying my eyes out. How could these people be so mean? And the thing is that really is how people in high school are. They pick on anyone who is different. If they had just been nice things could have been so wonderful. Maybe she would have brought her prom date home with her and he would have stopped her mother from stabbing her – who knows? But they had to go and ruin everything. By the time Carrie’s telekinesis kicked in and she started slamming all the doors shut I was screaming, “You go girl!” between sobs. Then she had to walk all the way home (Will no one stop to give a ride to a girl wearing a blood-soaked prom dress?) and deal with her bi-polar mother. It all ended very badly, and I was inconsolable, sobbing into my hands. By the time she did the thing where her bloody arm sprung out of the ground and grabbed Amy Irving, I saw it as a rightful posthumous expression of her overwhelming grief. Scary? Not a bit. I could have high-fived the girl.
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