Carrie: War of the Witches

Rated R

Stephen King strikes a raw nerve with this story. The conflict depends on a fatherless child whose mother damns Carrie for her own reckless behavior. This matron looses a specter straight out of The Scarlet Letter. She sees evil in every step her daughter takes toward womanhood. Implicitly, she cannot bear the ghost who peers back at her every time this offspring expects love.

The title character (Sissy Spacek) functions as youth under attack. Alone in a hostile universe, she encounters more witches at every turn. With supreme irony, her mother (Piper Laurie) accuses her, too, of being in league with the devil. Every witch movie we’ve ever seen lurks in the background: Bewitched, The Wizard of Oz, and, especially, The Crucible, where sexual innuendoes drive a wedge between the generations.

In high school, then, this underdog bears the burden of the guilt her mother heaps upon her. Even casual conversations reduce her to shaking and endless embarrassment. Her peers, no slouches at witchcraft, home in on this vulnerability, like a pack of jackals. Chris (Nancy Allen), the leader of the girlie forces, sees Carrie as the stereotypical witch — a slovenly creature, a reject from the handsome human race.

Chris does not lead her girlie troops, though, without competition. Sue (Amy Irving) joins her in satisfaction at humiliating Carrie — then deserts her comrades for a bid to become Miss Congeniality. Ambiguity characterizes this charmer’s every move. Does she offer Carrie her own prom date out of a spirit of generosity? Is she rehabilitating a ne’er-do-well? We never know for sure, and neither does her victim.

The loudest defender of the Girl Who Can’t Do Anything Right proves to be her gym teacher (Betty Buckley). Assuming the role of the stout defender of justice, this beauty queen combats the jackals as only she can. Unintentionally, she also precipitates a war she cannot win. This athlete cannot play warden any more than Carrie’s mother can reduce her forever to a cowering nun in her prayer closet.

Complications spin this plot faster than a whirling dervish. At what point does Carrie become the Woman of the Future? She demonstrates sewing skills, like a day laborer. A determined student, she huddles books to her chest, her brow furrowing and her eyes orbiting in mystification. Her powers expand as she researches her own nature and dilemma.

When we judge her, we cannot deny the havoc she ultimately wreaks. Simultaneously, we cannot see her in a human setting. Her community abandons her to the demons it creates and protects with the full power of the law. Then, it searches for her — too late for this lost child. As the supernatural takes over, we stand agog. Be prepared for a full frontal assault on the pressure cooker of modern society in this movie. Carrie may or may not escape — we still dwell here!

Meg Curtis

Meg Curtis leads a triple life as a creative writer, a college professor and a medievalist. From western New York, she gained insights into wildlife and spiritualism. In Appalachia, she learned to love America’s oldest mountains. She has settled happily, with three southern cats and a basset hound named Mr. Willoughby, in Freemansburg, Pennsylvania..