Jamie
Rachel is already a bit of an outcast, so when her BFF commits suicide and she ends up in the corsshairs of the coolest kids in school things go from bad to worse. Unfortunately for them Rachel isn’t any ordinary girl and her rage unlocks her supernatural powers. Can her rage be stopped (and maybe still get the guy) before it’s too late? Find out in… The Rage: Carrie 2.
How?! Rachel isn’t Carrie, which is confusing given the title of the film. But don’t worry, she’s Carrie’s sister, so that makes sense… other than the timeline being decades off. Anywho, forget all that. Just remember that Rachel is Carrie and totally has telekinetic powers. This will become relevant much later in the story, though, because at first she’s just a regular ol’ high school student. When her best friend commits suicide as a direct result of a group of football players’ gross game of hooking up with as many girls as possible, Rachel turns over some photographic evidence against one of them. This puts her in the crosshairs of the gang’s ire and as a result the school guidance counselor, who knew the original Carrie, gets increasingly concerned. Meanwhile, one of the popular guys, Jesse, begins to grow close to Rachel and he tries to stop his fellow players from bullying her. They all agree and play nice, but it’s all a ruse. They plan a romantic getaway for Jesse and Rachel and secretly film it. Then they set it up so after a big football game Rachel is whisked away to the post-game party without Jesse. Stranded with her tormentors, they play the tape of her and Jesse’s tryst much to her embarrassment… and rage! With her powers revealed she totally destroys everyone and the whole party becomes a scene of horror. Jesse arrives at the last moment and is able to calm her down enough to stop the horror, but Rachel is crushed when the house they are in collapses. Years later we see that Jesse is still terrorized by his memories of Rachel thus starting the cycle towards Carrie 3: Still Ragin’. THE END.
Why?! Rachel just seems to want to live her life, but it’s hard when you have supernatural powers that you are trying to keep in check. Everyone else wants to either help or hurt her and not much in between. Obviously this doesn’t turn out great for everyone involved.
Who?! We get some nice archival footage here in order to tie everything to the original Carrie. Sissy Spacek obviously makes an appearance in these flashbacks and is immediately the biggest star in the film. The only other notable thing is that the primary antagonist is played by Dylan Bruno who happened to go to MIT graduating in 1994 with a degree in Environmental Engineering. He then played a character on Numb3rs that also went to MIT. Fun facts.
What?! The “sex book” angle was an interesting one. It’s a ripped-from-the-headlines trope that comes up with regularity in tv and film. In a wild coincidence I was also watching Riverdale at the same time and the third episode of that show is also a “sex book” plot. It’s based on a California event about a group of high schoolers who called themselves the Spur Posse and I’ll just stop there. Terrible people and a terrible name.
Where?! There is an aspect of the plot that would likely necessitate it takes place in California, but I’m not going to go into that mostly because they make it clear it takes place in the same town as the original Carrie. That film is no doubt set in Maine and as a result I won’t even entertain the possibility that this one isn’t set in Maine. So Maine it is. It’s worth mentioning though that the film was not originally written as a sequel to Carrie, but rather was changed to fit the Carrie lore. So likely the original script was set in California. B-.
When?! It’s the beginning of the football season so we know it’s early Fall. There are a bunch of football schedules posted around town in a bunch of scenes that declare “We Support Bulldog Football.” In one such scene it appears like the first game of the season occurs on September 27th… so that is somewhat of an exact date and makes sense with the rest of film. It’s always fun to find something like this B-.
There were two things I kinda dug about this film. One is that I realized that I’m a sucker for any kind of high school drama. I actually would have almost preferred this was just an episode of The OC and all the paranormal mumbo jumbo didn’t factor in. But alas… it’s unfortunately a Carrie sequel. The second is that I appreciated that they went for it in the final scene. It needed to be fun and horror-like in order to make up for the complete lack of any of that stuff for 95% of the run time. It did a pretty good job on delivering. Gory with some fun kills. As for absolutely everything else in the film? Amateur hour. Second week in a row where I was scratching my head wondering how this even made it to theaters. But that wasn’t the worst bit. It’s the half-hearted attempt to make a Carrie sequel out of something that clearly wasn’t written as such. Rachel even being Carrie’s half sister is quite the stretch given that in the book Carrie’s dad is long dead and even in the movie he’s long gone having run out on the family. So you’re saying he came back to town, impregnated another woman and then ran away again… by why? Why the same exact town? Makes you wonder whether you could even make a telekinetic high school student film… or would it be rejected from the jump because it’s too similar to Carrie? Is that plot now totally off the table other than the occasional film they then retcon into a bullshit sequel? Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Carrie was so nice they made it twice. Only the second time it was considerably worse and about goths and stuff. Let’s go!
P’s View on the Preview – The trailer looks like a television movie. It has television actors in it. It is a sequel to a beloved horror film from the 70s based on a beloved horror book by the quintessential horror author. And yet … it was released to theaters. The 90s man. What were my expectations? Uh … well, I fully expected to just watch Carrie again, but with cheesy 90s trash thrown everywhere and probably a heavy metal soundtrack maybe? A remake in all but name.
The Good – The reskin of the Carrie story works in its own 90s way. The outsider goes from being a sheltered weirdo, to, effectively, a goth. Combine that with the bizarre aggressiveness of the football team and the whole package works … as a television movie. All of this is “good” in the sense that all of this is not released to theaters as a Carrie sequel. I think it is important to make that caveat. Best Bit: The main character.
The Bad – Rachel being Carrie’s half-sister is an obvious twist that begs way more questions than it answers and provides no interesting lore. Like … is Ralph White telekinetic? Is it genetic? Do all of his children have this gift? Are there other strange psychic powers in this world (… does this take place in the world of The Shining, I guess I would think so)? They are interesting questions, but the twist is so half-hearted that it gives nothing in return. The ripped-from-the-headlines sex book is gross, a pretty bleak blast-from-the-past. And the direction is terrible, a hodge-podge of restless camera movements and unnecessary black-and-white nonsense. Fatal Flaw: Dumb twist.
The BMT – If this was merely a made-for-television sequel/remake of Carrie it would be a whole lotta nothing. But as a genuine released-to-theaters sequel to Carrie it is an abomination. I wanted very much to like a lot of the film, especially the somewhat interesting Rachel as played by Emily Bergl, but the entire thing feels like a weird joke. Almost a parody of the source material / Stephen King in general. Did it meet my expectations? Yeah, it is basically a Carrie clone masquerading as a sequel. I guess they do a decent job in updating the main character / triggering event to something a bit more 90s (goth / secret sex tape), but that is about it.
Roast-radamus – In reality the only good superlative is Worst Twist (How?) for the inevitable reveal that our orphaned hero Rachel is Carrie’s half-sister. Closest to Bad in the end I think, as much as I wanted to find all of this very amusing, it is kind of a nothing movie that I could never see myself watching ever again.
Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Well … we’ve already had a sequel and a remake to Carrie. So I guess we are just left with a prequel. And Ralph White is ripe for the big screen treatment. Let’s see, given Carrie’s age in the book it isn’t absurd to think that Ralph White could have been involved in World War II, so let’s go with that. He’s a soldier in the European theater during the push to Berlin near the end of the war. While travelling through a German village he meets a young woman who he falls in love with. But tragedy strikes, his platoon mates (who despise him), are determined to play a trick on him during the final night in the town (the same night he and the young woman consummate their tryst). Embarrassing Ralph (they’re all going to laugh at you! But in german) he goes insane and levels the town. The army is convinced that Ralph is just the lucky survivor of one of the final battles of the war, and he is sent home, disillusioned about love with his new power awakened. But, what a twist! We see later that the young woman miraculously survived … as did her child, destined to have the same powers that Ralph has! Ba-ba-baaaaaaaaaaaa. Carrie: Origins is basically the only good name, although an amusingly cryptic and simple Ralph White would also be fun. Everyone would be like “am I supposed to know who Ralph White is? Oh, it’s Carrie’s dad? Weird.”
Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 