Carrie (1976)
88 %
Reviews Counted: 41 Fresh: 36 Rotten:5 Average Rating: 8.1/10
Consensus:
Carrie is a horrifying look at supernatural powers, high school cruelty, and teen angst -- and it brings us one of the most memorable and disturbing prom scenes in history.
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
Synopsis: Brian De Palma's commercial breakout, based on a novel by Stephen King, helped launch a whole slew of teen-based horror films, and Carrie the blood-spattered prom queen has taken her throne in the pantheon of modern American myth. High school girls played by Amy Irving (in her film debut),... [More]
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Starring: Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, John Travolta, William Katt, Nancy Allen
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Reviews
Comment
The reason Carrie is still held in such high regard as a horror classic is very simple: it's all in the sheer directorial bravado. De Palma at the top of his game.
09/25/07
Carrie rivals The Shining for the title of greatest ever Stephen King adaptation.
09/25/07
The film has a strikingly unsettling mood that enhances its power and gives it an impact that the story would otherwise lack. Much of the credit, though, must go to Spacek, who so convincingly portrays Carrie's pain and her longing for acceptance.
09/25/07
This 1976 thriller, about a high school outcast (Sissy Spacek) who uses her telekinetic powers to massacre the graduating class, contains a number of interesting ideas. But as with most of his films, De Palma can't keep track of them.
09/25/07
Top Critic
The bulk of "Carrie" is not a gore-fest, but a prescient tone poem about the mental torture of social outcasts in high school halls in the pre-Columbine era.
07/15/07
Carrie might be a film about high school, but it was perhaps Brian De Palma's first completely mature film.
08/25/06
De Palma's Gothic thriller is at once trashy and lyrical, a nasty revenge story in which its misfit-Cinederella-like heroine (an exquisite Sissy Spacek) discovers her sexuality under the most terrifying conditions.
05/30/06
The fierce sympathy it extends to its unfashionable central character puts the film a million miles above the contemporary line in sick exploitation.
02/09/06
A total knockout. Piper Laurie gives a bravura performance as Carrie's religious fanatic mother, one of the creepiest movie characters ever.
01/24/06
It is sometimes funny in a puzzling kind of way, it is generally overwrought in an irritating kind of way, and once in a while it is inappropriately touching.
05/09/05
Top Critic
A nearly perfect film. The combination of pathos, shocks, and grand guignol excess is orchestrated with jaw-dropping precision by young Depalma, whose later films would pale by comparison.
03/31/05
Young director Brian DePalma is fast making his reputation in the genre of the suspense-horror film.
03/06/05
Top Critic
Brian De Palma's Carrie is an absolutely spellbinding horror movie, with a shock at the end that's the best thing along those lines since the shark leaped aboard in Jaws.
10/23/04
Top CriticRelated Forums
Carrie Deserve Cult Status:A Short Analyzation of a Classic
by: rotten_tomatoe 7/22/04
by: rotten_tomatoe 7/22/04
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• Carrie at Rotten Tomatoes
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