Horror fans there are so few films out there that I would argue aren't horror films at all but are infact a different genre entirely and well the film that i'm about to review for you all today is one of those films. For you see I see this film not as a horror film but I personally see this film as a tragedy or even a drama and so join me horror fans as I now review the 1976 horror classic that made Stephen King a house hold name with the film in question being called simply just "Carrie" enjoy.
The plot of this film is Shy 16 year old Carrie White is tormented by her fellow students one day at high school and after one of the bullies gets suspended and banned from the prom Carrie and the rest of the students will soon come to discover that this prom will be one to remember but for all of the very wrong reasons indeed. In terms of what I thought about the plot of this film in all honesty the plot of this film is rather simple and in all honesty that's not a bad thing since the main focus of this film isn't the plot it's the characters and the lose of sanity in Carrie White that's the main focus of this film but with that being said I would have liked it if this film did have a much stronger or even a better plot line tho.
Starring in this film is Sissy Spacek as Carrie White , Piper Laurie as Margaret White and Amy Irving as Sue Snell. Also starring in this film is William Katt as Tommy Ross , In one of his very earliest film roles we have a very young John Travolta as Billy Nolan , Nancy Allen as Chris Hargensen , Betty Buckley as Miss Collins , P. J. Soles as Norma Watson , Priscilla Pointer as Eleanor Snell , Sydney Lassick as Mr. Fromm and Stefan Gierasch as Principal Morton.
In terms of what I personally thought about the acting that's featured / presented to us in this film in all honesty the acting that's featured / presented to us in this film is alot better then what I thought that it would be. Since i've honestly never even seen this film all the way through and so I honestly thought that the acting in this film was going to be pretty bad since that's true for most if not all Stephen King film adaptations but to my surprise the acting that's featured / presented to us in this very film is really freaking good with a special shout out / mention going to Sissy Spacek who simply is Carrie White and Sissy Spacek does such a good job acting in this film that it was hard for me to spot where the character of Carrie White and ended and where Sissy Spacek began because that's how good Sissy Spacek is in this film in the role of Carrie White.
I honestly really do love the opening of this movie since the opening is so calm that is makes for a great juxtaposition with all of the carnage that comes later on in the film. I honestly cannot give the opening of this particular film enough credit because for me at least we are inside the head of Carrie White while that opening is playing hence why the music that's playing over the opening credits is so soft and relaxing and yet the second that Carrie herself starts to feel uneasy the calm music stops and we are now back into real life and we are stuck in this form of real life until the end of the film.
Now for me at least I don't see this film as a horror film I personally see this film as either a tragedy or as a drama. Since for me at least Carrie White isn't the main villain of this film she is just someone who was pushed so far of the edge by both her fellow students and teachers and by her own mother and all Carrie wants to do is just fit in with the rest of her fellow students and yet those same students don't like Carrie the staff constantly get Carrie's name wrong and her mother abuses her.
This is to me is what makes this film feel more like a tragedy or a drama since when we do see Carrie be generally happy for once in her life it's taken away from her by the characters of Chris and Billy. Heck you could even make the argument that Carrie's own mother Margret White also tries to stop Carrie being happy when she tries and fails to stop Carrie from going to the prom and all of these reasons and more could also be used to say that this film is more of a drama then a straight forward horror film.
There are a few things that I didn't like about this film with the first of which being that all of this films characters felt very underdeveloped to me personally. Which is a shame since the book does give us some detail as to what each character is like and none of that is presented to us in the final cut of this particular film and this is also a shame because I honestly did like the characters in this film even all of the bully characters had some charm to them but I would have loved it if we got to find out more about what makes these characters tick.
The other thing that I didn't like about this film is it this films running time since this film has a total running time of one hour and thirty eight minuets and nine seconds and while there is nothing wrong with having a short running time. The film spends alot of time with no scares and just setting up the prom which is fine for a longer film since then you can space out all of your scares but this film isn't even an hour and forty minuets long and so you need to get to the scares alot quicker but on the flip side of that if you did get to the scares alot quicker then you wouldn't have the time to fully develop your characters nor would you have the time to build up any kind of tension whatsoever and so it's coin toss situation really where on one side of the coin you have possibly great scares but you don't care about any f the characters but the other side of that coin you very little scares but you have great and memorable characters and some great tension built almost up to the point where anything would scare you.
Now then boys and girls since this is a Carrie film and so that means that I have to talk about this films version of the classic prom sequence and if i'm being really honest this sequence more then lived up to my already fairly high expectations of this film. This is due to the fact that the film took the time to make you care for and to make emphasize with Carrie White and so when she finally does start to kill everybody that's there at the prom that night you really do feel happy for Carrie and scared for everyone else because you've seen Carrie go through so much torment in this film and so to see get some measure of revenge is always a happy occasion but at the same time due to the evil crime that Carrie is sadly committing throughout the final act of this film you also feel scarred for everyone else because you the audience know exactly what Carrie can do and we don't know how far Carrie White is willing to go with her sick and twisted form of revenge.
Overall this is a really good film and this film really does deserve any and all of the praise that it gets and while I can't / cannot say if this film is the best adaptation of the book I can say that it really does set the bar really freaking high for all of the other Carrie film adaptations in my opinion anyways. Now then i've talked about both of the good and as well as both of the bad things that are in this film in this very review and as such this film gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me.
As for where I got all of the images that I used in this review well then boys and girls I got all of the images that I used in this very review from either the official Carrie fandom wiki page or from Google Images. With my preferred website to use to get the images from this film that I ended up using in this very review being the official Carrie fandom wiki page and so then horror fans we end this review as we always do with our one and only true goddess Elvira wishing us all some very very unpleasant dreams indeed.
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