25 October 2010

Carrie



As to the plot, I get a little confused because Chris (a.k.a. RoboCop's partner Lewis) and her boyfriend (a.k.a. Kirstie Alley's love interest in Look Who's Talking) seem to be the only ones actually in on the prank, and maybe the annoying friend in the ballcap. I guess that means Tommy (a.k.a. The Greatest American Hero) and Sue (who looks familiar and is in things I've seen but I can't place her, so we'll call her Jessica Rabbit's Singing Voice) were actually being totally benevolent when Sue offered her boyfriend to Carrie, and when he charmed the pants off her with his blasé who-gives-a-shit-we're-all-idiots attitude, big blonde mop and easy smile. He even kissed her! More than once! And all the friends who came around and accepted the former pariah... I got confused.

I think what confuses/confused me here is that we're meant to see the story through Carrie's POV, which means we suspect everyone is conspiring to humiliate her because she suspects that. Carrie's a big sheltered dork bordering on homeschool naivete, but she's no fool, and she knows how the others view her. But there are exceptions, whose characters we step away from Carrie to view, such as her crazy mom (who we never sympathize with, even when maybe we should) and her kind-hearted teacher Miss Collins (who we always sympathize with, even when maybe we shouldn't). I think having these less subjective viewpoints led me to believe that we'd stepped away from the limited-viewpoint of Carrie's paranoia and that the conspiracy wasn't all in her head. So not until literally the moment when Sue sees the string attached to the blood bucket did I even have an inkling that this wasn't The World vs. Carrie, and it was only Chris vs. Carrie.

But by the end I get it, and as hell broke loose all over the Bates High (heh) gymnasium in all its blood-drenched, fire-hosed, flaming-inferno glory, I was trying to reassociate my sympathies to the innocents who were being telekinetically murdered. In that sense, it's an interesting take on how a single act of serious bullying not only implicates a community but how much damage it can wreak on both the victim and those around her. It's also a lot less horrory than I thought, which isn't a complaint (even in my horror-movie kick, I'd rather have a good movie than a horror movie). It's more high school melodrama with pseudo-religious witchcraftery afoot. And I'm okay with that.

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