The
Rage: Carrie II, directed by Katt Shea, is a sequel
to Brian De Palma’s 1976 film Carrie. Now in
1999, with a female as director, the plot changes cleverly,
though the tagline "Looks can kill" sounds similar. Amy Irving,
who appeared in the first Carrie, now plays
a school counselor named Sue Snell who is aware of the dangers
of telekinesis. The new Carrie, named Rachel (played by Emily
Bergl), is a much more brainy, streetwise girl who lives with
strict working-class parents and wants to be independent.
Her best girlfriend, however, plunges to suicide because of
a loss of virginity, though Rachel does not know why her girlfriend
took the loss so hard. We learn that high school jocks have
an ongoing competitive macho game in which all girls in the
school are assigned points; when an athlete lays the girl,
he gets the points, as entered into a notebook. Rachel does
not realize that her friend leaped to her death because the
boys told her about the game after she was laid, but she knows
about the loss of virginity and tries to stay away from the
boys. The school authorities, meanwhile, find out about the
culpability of the jock who date-raped her friend (Eric, played
by Zachary Ty Bryan) and turn the matter over to the police.
Since the jocks are sons of the best families in the town,
the mayor of the town lets them off, so they are eager for
more and have a score to settle with Rachel, who has a high
point count in part because she claims to be a Lesbian. However,
the most intelligent of the jocks (Jesse, played by Jason
London) opts out of the game that he can no longer tolerate
and befriends Rachel, whom he finds to be his intellectual
equal. Angered that Rachel has stolen her erstwhile boyfriend,
one of the girls at school hatches a plot to have Rachel invited
to a party after a football game while delaying the arrival
of Rachel’s new boyfriend at the party. While at the party
without her date, the boys show Rachel the scorekeeping book
and a videotape of her own date-rape with her boyfriend, who
thus is not around to explain that he was out of the game
and did not know about the videotaping. Rachel’s rage erupts,
the house where the party is held burns, many die, and then
her boyfriend arrives. Hoping to rescue Rachel from death,
in the role of a true Romeo he goes into the house, but Rachel
(now Juliet) dies when part of the roof falls on her. Fast
forward two years, and her boyfriend is at college with a
picture of Rachel alongside the desk in his dorm. Rachel appears
to him, almost in the manner of the film Ghost, and then the
image shatters. He is haunted by her love. What the movie
demonstrates is the cruelty of adolescent machismo, conformity
imposed by macho leaders, and the willingness of even girls
to ape the cruelty of machismo. The idea for the film came
from Lakewood High School in Southern California where such
a game was actually played in recent years. A subplot in the
film is that telekinesis is a disease, and the counselor tries
but fails to help the second Carrie "before it is too late."
Although horror films are escapist and any lessons contained
therein are immediately forgotten by most who leave the theatre,
a more serious analysis should ask whether the power structure
in narcissistic America has become so callous that romantic
love and justice have become passé. Certainly the fact that
the meek shall inherit the earth is a theme in both films,
but that is not soon enough; justice delayed is certainly
justice denied. The films apparently say that those who are
powerless now will have God on their side when judgment comes,
but it is a sad commentary that so many lives will be ruined
in the meantime, and perhaps telekinesis powers are not a
malady but a gift. If the cruel macho men of the world, including
Hitler and others, thought that they would have to pay in
this life from a Carrie or Rachel, it would be a very different
world. For those who remember Carrie I, this sequel has less
violence, more character development, portrays machismo at
its worst, and is one of the best feminist films in years.
MH
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