THE FILM THAT TERRORISES: CARRIE
I DON’T BELIEVE in ghosts. Or monsters, UFOS, reincarnation, psychics, vampires, poltergeists, clairvoyants or ouija boards. In fact, let’s just say I’m spiritually bankrupt. Tell me you saw a ghost and I’ll roll my eyes, put me in a creaky old house and I’ll sleep like a baby. But put me on my comfy sofa with Carrie and I won’t relax for the next three months.
I’m scared of horror films. Not the high-camp type — the Elm Streets, the Evil Deads and the Screams, which are all super fun and thrilling but scary only while I’m watching, then instantly forgotten; but the spooky, sinister, psychological ones like Suspiria, The Others and Misery. All render me incapable of boiling the kettle or nipping to the loo unaccompanied, so frozen I am in fear, blanket all around me, no gaps for a bloodied, creeping hand.
Carrie (1976, not the needless 2013 remake) is the best, and consequently the worst, of them all, and pinpoints the moment my rational brain first left the building. I first saw it aged eight, when my ever age-inconsiderate parents left the VHS cassette in the wardrobe-sized toploader, and I did what I’ve done with all horror films since — put instant gratification ahead of long-term wellbeing and went directly against my better interests by watching the whole thing.
If you haven’t seen it, allow me to limit any future damage to your central nervous system. Carrie White (played beguilingly by Sissy Spacek) is a highschool pariah. She’s mousy, skinny, intense, shy and bullied. Life’s no better at home, where she lives with a controlling, fanatically religious mother who’s as mad as a cut snake. To friendless Carrie’s astonishment, she’s asked to the prom by the handsome boyfriend of the school bitch, and wrongly assumes it’s genuine, laying herself open to public humiliation and a grotesque practical joke that ends, literally and figuratively, in a bloodbath.
I’d like to say it gets easier after that, but the last scene is the most terrifying of all and meant that whenever I was left alone as a young child (frequently — this was the 1980s), I could barely move until someone got home, listening out for every murmur, whisper or creak, my eyes playing tricks on me as the pattern in the gaudy wallpaper shifted and mutated; convinced Carrie would appear, bloodsoaked and crazed, at any moment.
There’s no greater testament to the power of film, great writing (adapted from Stephen King), directing (by Brian De Palma at the top of his game) and acting (John Travolta, the extraordinary Piper Laurie as the evangelical mother) that I, someone who feels utter certainty in the non-existence of firestarting and telekinesis, can look into Carrie’s eyes and at once feel deepest sympathy and abject terror. And this, for me, is what separates fun horror and something like Carrie: the fear of which I never outgrew. It’s not about blood, guts, tropes and set-pieces. The scariest horror movies are about character. People so relatable that you believe in their ability to do impossible things. Just as Sleepless In Seattle makes me believe temporarily in fate, and Toy Story in talking, feeling slinky dogs, Carrie, for 98 whole minutes, causes me to suspend my disbelief to such a degree that I’m shaken for weeks. It’s extraordinary — and why cinema is still the only magic I believe in.