These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. Cohen: To keep the prom action continuous, I agreed with Brian to excise an interlude [Stephen King] had created after the blood fell in which Carrie fled the gym, ran across the school's front . Mise-en-scene and Cinematography Analysis of Inglourious Basterds. Her gawkiness is internalized. Miss Desjardin, the gym teacher, places the girls on punishment, and after their leader Chris protests, she gets banned from prom. The horror most strongly associated with. Mentioning Stephen King's classic 1974 horror novel likely calls to mind one of two iconic scenes: Carrie getting her period for the first time in the school shower and being pelted with tampons as her classmates scream "Plug it up!" or Carrie wreaking fatal havoc on a gym full of students after being drenched in pig's blood just as she was Her story is just beginning. This is tragedy. Carrie goes home to face her mother, who believed she got possessed by Satan. I will be focusing on the iconic prom scene which serves as the climax of the film, as Carrie takes revenge on her high school bullies after constantly being tormented. The primary genre ofCarrieis horror. Where Pierces film does diverge from de Palmas somewhat is in its restoration of Sue as a main character. Carrie just happens to be the weakest so she bears the brunt of the evil which explodes forth from Chris. By the Carrie study guide contains a biography of Stephen King, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Each killing is a discrete work employing different media and techniques: death by psychic assault, by trampling, by electrocution, by fire, by face-through-glass. that what she witnessed was a natural act? The disaster climax of the original 1976 Carrie is like any top-tier, truly unforgettable scene in cinema so well-known that you don't even have to see it to know. The camera is static when showing Carrie, in contrast to her victims, this shows that she is now in control. Carrie discovers she has the power to move objects with her mind. Her haunting you from inside your own body. thissection. Nothing can stop what's coming. Carrie makes it home to kill Momma. Piper Laurie also scored an Oscar nod for her performance as Margaret White, Carrie's abusive and religiously fanatical mother. likely calls to mind one of two iconic scenes: Carrie getting her period for the first time in the school shower and being pelted with tampons as her classmates scream Plug it up! or Carrie wreaking fatal havoc on a gym full of students after being drenched in pigs blood just as she was crowned prom queen. Getting elected as prom queen was the worst event of Carries sad life as she got forced to experience the brutality of how no one cared about her. Carrie snaps out of that hallucination, then pulls of her wig and stars pensively into the distance. Sue lays down her rose. This adaptation was intended as a backdoor pilot for an ongoing. Pino Donaggio filled the role, composing a four-note string arrangement that is nearly identical to an overage in Herrmann's Psycho score. One thing Carrie wanted was to have revenge on the people who tormented her. Class differences play a part in Carrie's mistreatment; a few early shots establish that Carrie and Margaret live far from the obviously privileged high school, in a modest neighborhood. In screenwriter Bryan Fuller and director David Carsons adaptation, no one gets haunted by Carrie, either literally or figuratively, because Carrie doesnt die. Carrieby Stephen King is a novel that tells the story of a teenage girl Carrie, who faced torment in many aspects of her life. The silence also serves as a cooling point for the audience after the frantic build up to the climax. Peirce's version sometimes makes Chris seem a bit of a victim, too, by implying that she was spoiled rotten by her yuppie dadplayed by a perfectly cast Hart Bochner, a.k.a. Prom was great. One story. In conclusion the scene masterfully exhibits Carries change from an isolated young girl, into a vengeful supernatural entity, the use of sound and editing emphasis her change and adds tension to the scene. With Julianne Moore, Chlo Grace Moretz, Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday. However, Nancy Allen was already promised the role of Sue Snell, so De Palma cast her as Chris Hargensen instead. The epistolary style of writing adopted by Stephen King madeCarrieeerily realistic as Stephen King used different peoples perspectives to narrate the events of Carries life and death. I will be focusing on the iconic prom scene which serves as the climax of the film, as Carrie takes revenge on her high school bullies after constantly being tormented. Like the novel, the movie became a smash hit, turning a $1.8 million investment into a $33.8 million moneymaker. The Something was dangerous, ancient, unutterably evil. The fact that Carrie is silent about the abuse she suffers at home and school is contrasted to the prom scene where she is also silent but she finally takes control and the silence signifies that. Prom Dress. Carrie and Tommy get crowned prom king and queen. Tommy dies after the bucket falls on his head. It will make you think of the evil that goes on in parking lots and roadhouses.. Curiously, for such a secular movie, this "Carrie" lends Biblical significance to every blood drop spilled. But Kings novel is more than just a pair of bloody bookends. Sue is drawn to the high school by a strange sense of premonitory dread, suggesting a psychic link between the two girls. NEXT: The 10 Best Brian De Palma Movies, Ranked (According To IMDB). The intention of the editing and sound is to set up tension in the build up to the pig's blood being poured on Carrie. The movie links Carrie's burgeoning power to creativity, watching her develop her gifts until, at the end, she is assured enough to preside over a combination Grand Guignol play and art exhibit. The one thing which that description does not apply to throughout most of the book isCarrie White. Carrie discovers she has telekinetic powers. After that, they were thrown out of the garden of their innocence, or ignorance; each counterplot or attempt to make amends is a doomed attempt to return to the garden. Margarets fanatism influenced Carries life as it cut her off from the real world. The primary theme ofCarrieis ostracization. Perhaps because this "Carrie" is helmed by one of the only prominent female directors in Hollywood, Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry"), it appreciates Carrie and her mother and the heroine's various female adversaries as women, and portrays their brand of cruelty as specifically female. In the end of Deliverance, the protagonist is jolted awake by a nightmare of the sadistic cannibal strangers who hunted him throughout the film. write out a theme statement for Blood in the book. Ostracization is a primary theme inCarrieas it sets the events surrounding Carries life. Its Carrie who inspires Sues first transgressions against the social order: Sue rebels against the cruel, popular Chris Hargensen by accepting her share of the punishment for abusing Carrie and flouts the expectations of her peers by sending Carrie to prom in her place. Sue decides to meet her as she hears the telepathic message. When Carrie spares Miss Desjardin from the prom rampage, lifting her off a dance floor that she's about to fill with corpses, it's one of the most perversely touching gestures in a movie filled with them. Her haunting you from. The 2002 made-for-television adaptation of, offers another ending for the story that differs dramatically from the novel and the film adaptations and for good reason. Ellis from "Die Hard." In the beginning of my section, pages 217 to 290, Carrie is onstage at the prom and just won prom queen. International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct,London, EC1A 2BN, United Kingdom, 2023 Book Analysis. In this ending, there is no investigative hearing and no voiceover explaining the reasons behind Carries break. Sue still places the flower on the grave but this time, she reaches for her (obviously pregnant) belly and screams in pain. More books than SparkNotes. Actually, its worth noting Carrie spares Sue that fright. Carries terror kills hundreds of people. Sue is still pregnant and clutches her belly, still screaming, as her mother holds her hand. Its incredibly satisfying: poignant but not too pat. Carrie gets dressed up nicely for prom, but it is done in a realistic way. However its worth noting that this fear is not of Carrie herself, but of giving birth to Carrie: of having a daughter that takes after (the tormented, suffering and eventually violent) Carrie. From the rain of tampons in the locker room shower to the shower of pigs blood at the prom, Carries blossoming into maturity is always accompanied by her torturous nemesis, Christine Hargensen. Home Stephen King Carrie Themes and Analysis. Bad dream? Sue asks, before her face is transformed into that of Chris Hargensen. De Palma had to constantly remind her on set they were making a horror movie instead. However, no matter how hard she tried, she was always rejected by her peers. Mentioning Stephen Kings classic 1974 horror novel likely calls to mind one of two iconic scenes: Carrie getting her period for the first time in the school shower and being pelted with tampons as her classmates scream Plug it up! or Carrie wreaking fatal havoc on a gym full of students after being drenched in pigs blood just as she was crowned prom queen. For all the psychological realism of Carrie and Margaret's relationship, however, this remake has a comic book feeling. Using epistolary writing, Stephen King designed Carrie to show different angles of characters who mattered to the story. Her body is perceived as possessed by an introject of an intrusive, domineering,. In the penultimate scene in Carrie, De Palma opted to create an eerie visual effect by filming a shot in reverse. Posted on February 7, 2016 by asenaoyzoyn. , but for the most part it is consistent with the spirit of Kings ending. All rights reserved. In Carrie, De Palma makes at least three connections to Hitchcock's iconic horror movie Psycho. Whole sequences have a Clark-Kent-in-Smallville feeling. By ending with this reference de Palma aligns Carrie with these psychopaths, recasts Carrie simply as a creature haunting Sues unconscious. 40 years ago, Carrie White went to the prom. Prom Dresses Market 2023 Research report presents an in-depth analysis of the Prom Dresses market size, growth, share, segments, manufacturers, and technologies, key trends, market drivers . RELATED: The Cast Of Carrie (1976): Where Are They Now? Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. An adverse effect of Carries ostracization was her not even knowing how the female body works. However, viewers can spot the optical illusion when a car in the background drives down the street backward. In this version, Carrie gets to be the Final Girl. Its a relatively faithful adaptation of Kings story (at least for the first two-thirds) that focuses entirely on Carries story as it unfolds, eschewing the epistolary aspect of the novel the interviews, textbook excerpts and reports that provide meta-commentary on the events of prom night. She has telekenesis, the ability to manipulate things without touching them. A state of emergency is declared in Chamberlain as the death toll reaches four hundred. A hopeless cinephile, social media Luddite, certified Nic Cage doppelganger, and a big Weekend At Bernie's fan, Jake can often be found tucked away in a dark corner watching an old horror movie. RELATED: 10 Differences Between Carrie Remake & Original 1976 Movie. As Sissy Spacek's unlikely prom queen takes the stage to be crowned, De Palma toys with us to the point of cruelty. This is achieved by an eye line match, as her awareness grows; the camera follows her line of vision. The first "Carrie" was horror. Then the string running along it. Playlists - The time is now (Carrie 2002) - Prom King and Queen (OST Carrie 1976)- The Dirge (OST Sorority Row)- Fire/Bombing London (OST 28 Weeks Later)- S. Chris decides to exert her revenge on Carrie by ruining her prom and employs the help of her boyfriend and his gang. These various adapted endings all have their points of interest but its hard to argue with Kings original. This ending is a significant departure from all previous version of the characters, which makes sense for a film exists not so much to adapt Kings book but to provide an origin story for a new series. Every Wednesday we .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}show you a great scene from film history you may remember, you may not and then we break it down for you. Spacek wore a sailor dress made for her as a child and smeared Vaseline in her hair prior to the audition, which she hit out of the park. A shy girl, outcast by her peers and sheltered by . And the shock ending of Kings novel is that just for a moment and far too late she isnt. The scene then shifts to a rainy graveyard, where a black-clad Sue is walking with a single white rose in her hand. It takes forever. The music composer for Psycho, Bernard Herrmann, scored two of De Palma's prior movies, Sisters and Obsession. The horror most strongly associated with Carrie is gore, the horror of mass murders and pigs blood. An editor The prom is a masterpiece of mixed-media slaughter, "Hellraiser" by way of Columbine. For example, where the girls in the 1976 "Carrie" tormented the menstruating heroine in the shower in a wolf-pack manner, as teenaged boys might attack another teenage boy, the shower attack in this film is a joke that originates in embarrassment and nausea, then snowballs. The motif of Carrie's life is bullying and so this is also a motif in the book. Psychokinetic retribution. Carrie is bulled everywhere she goes, both home and school. De Palma opted to keep the shot in the film, even though Soles was so badly hurt that she could not hear out of one ear for the following six months before the eardrum eventually mended. Carrie 's climactic scene (which runs a little over 20 minutes in its entirety) follows the title character, socially naive outcast Carrie (Sissy Spacek), as she goes to her first school. The script has Chris be exaggeratedly "evil" when it serves the plot, but life-sized elsewhere. Sue kneels down to lay the bouquet at the foot of the sign, when suddenly a bloody hand springs up from the earth and locks onto Sues wrist. Even when Carrie tried her best to fit in, she still got rejected; this only added to her torture. But even as she does this, Sue acknowledges her sacrifice is also a means of assuaging her guilt and exercising her power over Tommy. The community's original sin was attacking Carrie in the shower, humiliating her for manifesting signs of Eve's "curse." She isnt pretty. Made by Carrie out of crushed red velvet, her prom dress has a princess waistline, Juliette sleeves, and a simple skirt. The prom crowd doesn't start lusting after her the moment she walks in. However, she discovers herself, and her life completely changes. But when famed production designer Jack Fisk suggested his wife Sisssy Spacek audition, everything changed. She doesn't fit the traditional role of femininity that is often sought out in high school. As Walter Chaw writes, "Peirce's Carrie does something DePalma's doesn't do nearly so well: it describes Carrie's headspace, so that her telekinesis becomes expressionistic.". Blood represented an entity that Carrie knew she was never going to escape. Whatever the book. Fatal Attraction Works As Entertainment, Fails as Social Commentary, Prime Videos Citadel Traps Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden in Played-Out Spy Game, New York Philharmonic and Steven Spielberg Celebrate the Music of John Williams, A Piece of His Fire: Harry Belafonte (1927-2023). Momma had told her there was Something. And totally memorable. When the Stephen King book was first optioned, it was set up with producer Paul Monash at 20th Century Fox, and Monash hired writer Lawrence D. Cohen to pen a first . This kind of horror story suits a spooky or bloody twist ending; it may even demand one. The sonic flashbacks end and a new non-diegetic score is introduced, the tone is eerie and it plays only one melody the entire time. Whereas the cinematography and mise-en- scene create a fairy tale like dreamy effect to showcase Carries almost magical experience at prom. When she is pushed to her breaking point, she doesnt (as many film adaptations often suggest) go into a trance or react instinctively and without intention. The intention of the editing and sound is to set up tension in the build up to the pigs blood being poured on Carrie. The scene flashes to one of her in the delivery room, still screaming, and asking again and again Is this normal? as objects begin to fly around the room. When Carrie dies, the tone employed by the novel is one of melancholy, sadness, and the feeling of completion of Carries life. The editing also manages to showcase Carries telekinetic powers with minimal use of special effects. Due to how well the book articulated its themes in the life of its characters, Carrie was regarded as an excellent first book for Stephen King. hallucination, then pulls of her wig and stars pensively into the distance. The shot was achieved by setting the two actors, Spacek and William Katt, on a platform that rotated in one direction, while the camera tracks in the opposition direction. had a famously troubled production and post-production. Its not an entirely faithful adaptation of the original end of Carrie, but for the most part it is consistent with the spirit of Kings ending. However, she discovers herself, and her life completely changes. This infantilizing is made clear when her mother fails to tell her about menstruation, her first period being her rite of passage, as it were, into womanhood. Peirce and screenwriters Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa give the whole film this kind of heartfelt, inside-out re-imagining. Expand Your Bookshelf With These 8 Interstellar Books Like The Expanse, The Best Sci-Fi Spaceships from Across the Galaxies, When Children's Book Authors Don't Like Children's Books, Love & Other Epic Adventures: Science Fiction Romance Books, 10 Bedtime Stories for Adults to Help You Get Some Shut Eye. After killing her classmates, Carrie heads home and confronts her mother, who believes she got possessed by Satan. She may have been listening to rock n roll music on the radio. She stabs Carrie in the shoulder. So too is the Bates Packing meat-plant seen later in the film. Stephen Kings choice of fanatical religion as a primary cause for Carries ostracization created a backlash in his book. It led to issues with religious groups who felt he pushed the limits on religion and took it too far. Carrie and Tommy get crowned as prom king and queen. When. Chris decides to ruin Carries life and follows her boyfriend to a farm where they kill pigs and drain their blood into a bucket. And ghost-Carrie does seem like the most obvious interpretation if we take this moment literally and as integral to the film. As she steps onto the stage, Chris pulls the bucket spewing pig blood all over Carrie. Whoever the author.Discover new and exciting books to dive into with our Book Explorer Tool. Even after the blood comes in the locker room, Carrie remains innocent. Carrie is one of the most iconic horror movies ever made, and here are 10 interesting behind the scenes facts about the film. A bond, however conflicted and short-lived, forged between the pair. Carrie faced the torture of adapting to an overzealously religious mother and terrible classmates. King crafts a lean, chilling, and insightful story that has at its heart a pair of complicated teenage girls who resist easy characterization. That question is asked more than once in "Carrie," and it cuts to the heart of this new adaptation. Moore's Margaret is a purely pitable figure who scratches and cuts her own flesh, and who cannot love herself, let alone a child. The film that resulted after excessive studio tinkering is much closer to de Palmas movie than Kings novel.
