Carrie (3)

by Stephen King

Here, now, is the final installment of my review - Prom Night.

But first, to give us a little understanding of how crazy Margaret White is, guilt-tripping her child by self-mutilation...

Her mother reached up and pinched her own face. It left a mark. She looked to Carrie for reaction, saw none, hooked her right hand into claws and ripped it across her own cheek, bringing thin blood. She whined and rocked back on her heels. Her eyes glowed with exaltation.

Carrie, standing her ground, goes to the fateful prom anyway. While she is preparing for Tommy to pick her up, doubtful, thinking that he may not come and that would be the trick they play on her this time, Billy is preparing for the big revenge. For him, it does not actually matter who sits on the throne of the kind and queen of the prom. He just wants to dump the pigs' blood he collected on somebody.

For Carrie, however, the night starts off magically. Tommy comes and tells her she is beautiful and when they arrive, nobody is making fun of her but treat her like everyone else and even make nice comments about her home made dress. This, of course, lasts only until the announcement that Tommy and Carrie had been voted prom king and queen. The book does not specify how the vote was manipulated, but only that it was. There is no replacing the ballots, merely a second - very close - vote because two couples are in dead lock.

Then they are on stage, sitting on the throne, while the collective bands play the school song - the sign for Chris and Billy, hiding under the stage, to dump the blood. For a while, nothing happens, because people don't know how to react to this, and at first nobody really notices that Tommy was knocked out by a metal bucket. Then it starts...

It was either laugh or cry, and who could bring himself to cry over Carrie after all those years?

What follows then, Carrie's path of destruction, has been altered for the film in time line and in levels of gore. Carrie runs out of the gym, covered in blood and tripping along the way, because someone finally does stick a foot out for her to fall over. The final decision to go back and make them all pay for years of bullying is made while lying on the grass outside. So suddenly she is back at the gym doors, but on the outside, keeping them shut with her mind. The sprinklers go off, electric wiring comes lose and before the explosions and the fire, there is a mass electrocution.

The path of destruction goes from the high school all the way to her own house, with fire hydrants popping open, making it hard for the fire fighters to get the water pressure they would need to stand any chance against the inferno along the streets. This is the manner of destruction - explosions, fires, electrocution.

Then at home, with Momma, who has been sharpening a knife to finally kill Carrie - something she failed to go through with after Carrie was born and then again when she was a 3 year old, raining ice and stones on the house. As Carrie, in desperate need of some comforting, but also aware that she came home specifically to kill Momma, falls into her mother's arms, she gets stabbed in the back. Here in the film comes the awesome scene with silverware flying at Momma, pinning her to the door frame. Not so in the book, here Carrie slows down her heart until it comes to a final halt. Not as exciting for film making, that.

Carrie's final stretch brings her to where Chris and Billy are. She ends up facing their car and - as Billy accelerates to run Carrie over, the car veers off the road and catches on fire. Then finally Carrie, whose ability of telekinesis puts her heart under strain whenever she uses her power, breaks down in the street. Sue Snell, knowing where she is, is there so that she does not have to die alone, at least.

They've forgotten her, you know. They've made her into some kind of a symbol and forgotten that she was a human being, as real as you reading this, with hopes and dreams and blah, blah, blah. Useless to tell you that, I suppose. Nothing can change her back now from something made out of newsprint into a person. But she was, and she hurt. More than any of us probably know, she hurt.

Stephen King's writing style
(with the inserted thoughts in the middle of a sentence)
is already very obvious.

A great, great book.

8/10