The most tragically beautiful horror movie ever made? I think so. That said, I find the more I watch it, the less it even feels like a horror movie and more like the saddest, most painful high school movie that just happens to be punctuated by blood and the supernatural. The only part that always really chills me is Piper Laurie’s eerily joyous performance, and the piano theme that plays at the White house (currently on the playlist on my front page radio thing), most particularly when Carrie falls down the stairs. That music cue just feels completely like death – or rather, the draining of life.

Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek were deservedly (if bizarrely – would it happen today, one wonders?) nominated for Oscars for their roles. I’m always just as taken by other performances, though: Amy Irving and Betty Buckley are particularly noteworthy. I love the way Buckley imbues Miss Collins with this real bug up her ass – I forget if her backstory is detailed in the novel, and I know she tells the story toward the end about taking the leader of the basketball team to her prom but I’m always torn between whether she was the Sue Snell of her time – a reluctant “popular girl” who sympathised with the Carrie Whites – or even worse the Carrie White of her time. There’s a real sense of triumph as she watches Carrie crowned as prom queen; of hope when she talks to Carrie about Tommy’s invitation; an instant confrontational attitude when she talks to the “popular” girls; instant doubt when asking Tommy and Sue about the illfated invitation. Intended or not, she does the all-grown-up bullied girl very well.

Then there’s the music. Pino Donaggio’s themes (far-too-obvious Psycho references notwithstanding, lol) – in addition to the two beautiful songs at the prom (“I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me” probably the best love song ever) are almost if not more than half the movie for me here. They carry you with Carrie to the depths with her mother at home and the horror of school to the tentative acceptance of the dream of having that final prom dance – and then the nightmare aftermath of even that seemingly impervious dream being shattered like all the rest.

BTW, the DVD of this is much better than I originally thought whenever it first came out. There are no commentaries or anything and the features list reads like just a bunch of promotional featurettes – but the “Acting Carrie” thing combined with “Visualising Carrie: From Words to Images” is really more like a decent behind-the-scenes documentary. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually contain the screentests they talk about … but it’s still really good hearing from most of the cast members years later.

I spent half this movie trying to think of what it was reminding me of. Then it hit me – 28 Days Later ... it’s the gradual descent into inhumanity of the film-within-a-film documentary crew, the sudden realisation that people basically suck almost as bad as monsters. After my complaints about Jungle Holocaust, my strange, “hey, what’s so bad about cannibals,” thought, it seems here Ruggero Deodato was thinking the same thing too. This is an incredibly grim portrait of how basically animal people can become under the right (wrong?) circumstances. It’s far more visceral than Jungle; and though it seems odd to call it “slicker” ‘cos it’s still delightfully cheap, it is still more proficiently shot, and the music’s really nice. Gotta love the casting of a near totally-flat-chested woman in a role that calls for so much gratuitous nudity too, lol.

If weren’t for the fact that it’d probably be too much of an assault on the senses, I think this would make a great double bill with Last House on the Left. Both movies seem so much on the surface to be pure exploitation but the fact is they’re not. If you’re remotely titillated by what these movies have to offer (and frankly, I think a good majority of viewers would be lying if they said they weren’t) – they expose that part of you completely. “I wonder who the real cannibals are,” is the last line here, and it couldn’t be more succinct. It kind of embodies the movie as a whole – yes, as a line, like the movie it’s incredibly cheesy … but it addresses such an animal thing, and on this viewing at least, this movie just really worked for me much better than expected.

It must be a good while since I last saw this one ‘cos it kind of felt like watching it for the first time, different things jumping out to a different me than before. The lovebirds swaying in the passenger seat of Melanie’s car; the scene with the postmaster, “You ever handled a boat before … want me to order one?” and the whole procedure of getting her to Bodega Bay. Was Hitchcock ever cheekier than he was here?

Is it still scary at all? I think certainly that final shot is one of the more chilling images in cinema. I’m always unsettled by the colour scheme too – a gorgeous mix of sickly greens and yellows, with blood-red spots of nail polish and lipstick on the women, ornaments in the background, Annie’s mailbox, a child’s cardigan at the school, a plush seat at the diner … and of course, ultimately, limited quantities of actual blood (in one scene, of course, actual blood). And somewhere in the last third, something switches, and the visceral terror of it all does take over – even as you’re still laughing at the sheer B-movie-ness of it all, the assault on the senses is undeniably effective, and Bernard Herrmann’s extraordinary sound design impacts above everything. Combined with the way the characters almost begin to sound like birds themselves towards the end (Hedren most of all – “Cathy! Where’s Cathy?” and that final “Nooooo!” as they attempt to get her out the door to escape), the whole combo is astoundingly primal, and there are psychological levels running through this movie that would take pages to address.

It starts as another of Hitch’s elaborate, playful “Boo!”s … but he really knows how to throw that switch, and on this occasion in particular, it really worked as a scary movie to a shocking extent.

Well I didn’t think it’d take me 2 years to update this with notes on “The Version You’ve Never Seen”, lol. I’m sure it can’t be that long since I last watched it.

And it’s always the way – my Halloween schedule always gets changed … apparently even when I start a week early, lol. This was meant to be watched a week from now, but I actually wanted to watch it yesterday – and today Sarah made my mind up for me.

Anyway … volume up and lights down ...

“I think the point is to make us despair …
... to see ourselves as … animal and ugly …
... to reject the possibility that God could love us …”

I begin with that line because it’s the point this umpteenth time around where I remembered in a burst of emotion out of nowhere why I continue to call this one of my favourite movies. I just totally lost it on that line.

I don’t think I need to say, “it’s still a great movie”. It’s one of the few movies I know for a fact will always be great movies. They’re beyond the context you view them in – they always work. It’s about what William Friedkin has said time and again – “What you take from The Exorcist is what you bring to it.” I’ve brought lots of things to this movie and I can say that he is 100% right. It works every time because it works on whatever is plaguing you, or even perhaps what’s pleasing you. I’ve come out of this movie both suicidal (when the incredible phrase, ”... negative – in other words, normal,” probably leapt out at me the most) and practically a Christian. It’s amazing the spectrum it covers.

“The Version You’ve Never Seen” is, as I’ve said before, my preferred version, and the version I watched tonight. What’s added is without exception, as far as I’m concerned, essential. The hospital scene – “I don’t feel anything,” and the weird humming dance thing … sure, you don’t miss them in the shorter version? But they add an unbelievable other dimension to the creeping fear, the gradual transformation of Regan. The conversation between Chris and the doctor: their expressions following the c-word line priceless. The subliminals added before Burke’s death is announced seem like a cheap shot, but I have to say, I even like those – then of course is the spider-walk, which is scary in itself but also worth it for the reaction shot of Ellen Burstyn, just truly a portrait of terror.

But it’s in the second half where the VYNS additions really start to be something else entirely. The tape of Regan’s voice, it’s just heartbreakingly necessary; the extra stuff with Merrin … the beautiful line about drink, “the doctors say I shouldn’t, but thank God my will is weak,” his response to Chris telling him Regan’s middle name, and her reaction to his line, plus the extended break mid-exorcism ... it’s all so much more than restored deletions, and it makes a great film astonishingly better. To cap it all is the ending I’d forgotten about entirely – “How’s the girl?” “Fine.” “That’s important.” Detective Kinderman is probably my favourite male character of all time – in film and literature. He’s just beautiful. It’s covered in just one brief exchange before the movie’s infamous highlight – “You’re a nice lady,” he says, “thank you,” to which Chris replies, “You’re a nice man.” So simple, so warm.

Most of all the additions keep longtime fans – who might occasionally find themselves numbed by the whole thing – on their toes.

It’s just a true masterpiece, it can’t be said enough, and I feel odd whenever I say it because so many people have said it better. I recommend to anyone who will listen that they immerse themselves in the whole Exorcist thing. Mark Kermode of course wrote the Bible, the BFI Classics book which is now in its 3rd or 4th edition? Just the best long study of any film I’ve ever read. He also made “The Fear of God” documentary available on one of the DVDs of this movie – though every version I’ve seen in the past 5 years has had his parts cut out which is a little annoying. He “hosted” a commentary on the Ninth Configuration DVD, and also wrote notes in the margins of that movie’s screenplay – a movie, which, incidentally, I recommend you regard as the true sequel to this one. Not to say you shouldn’t watch Exorcist II: The Heretic – I happen to like that movie, at the least it looks great and you can’t get enough of Linda Blair as Regan – but The Ninth is so much more in line with the themes set-up here. Then there’s William Peter Blatty’s many other works in literature.

I mean, that’s what this movie really means to me more than anything. The fact it’s a great film almost comes second to the things it opened doors to for me. It’s ten years this year since I first saw it, and I think of all the things that could’ve made me a totally different person now if you just deleted it from my history Sliding Doors style? I don’t even wanna imagine.

Anyway, I also promised there would be ancient “extras” eventually added to this review – well, luckily, I found them in an HTML format from my old site so I present them here unaltered as found without having even read them yet. These go back almost 10 years, so don’t attribute any stupidity therein to the me of now

College essay (more specific, circa 2000?)
School essay (more about the book – though you wouldn’t know, lol – and also about Frankenstein and Dracula … I wanted to do Carrie instead of one of those two but teacher was apprehensive enough about me having one modern text let alone a Stephen King book lol, circa 1998)

November 1st, 2005:

Hmm, I thought I was updating an old page containing a review of “The Version You’ve Never Seen” here but I clicked through and found a blank space so I’ll add some comments about that version another time.

What struck me watching the original theatrical cut today was how good this movie is even minus the extra scenes I love so much in the newer cut. It’s incredible how the pressure mounts, exhausting to be bounced from possible solution to possible solution with Chris McNeil. Regan’s transformation from button-nosed little girl to terrifying monster is practically seamless. And the movie doesn’t lack a little warmth – first in the relationship between mother and daughter and later between Detective Kinderman and just about anyone he shares a scene with.

I don’t know quite what else to say about the movie right now, it all feels like it’s been said before. I plan to watch the other version again soon too, plus I probably have other things written elsewhere that I can add to this page. It really is the best horror movie.

I’m sure my opinion will lose a lot of respect when I say this (lol like it has a lot to lose) ... but this is now one of my ten favourite movies ever, and it damn near tops the bunch. There’s just so much in this movie that hits me in the places I want movies to hit me. The Dakota tea-cup ride scenes hit me in a really personal place so hard, that look on her face that’s just like, typical, one week early to ride, pulling the glasses down over her eyes so Brittany Murphy can’t see her tearing up; and later when they finally ride it, both of them working out years of frustration on the wheel and each other; and like, I guess I can’t deny that where I am in life right now makes the whole “grow up” theme resonate deeper too, Murphy’s response to somebody telling her, “But this isn’t you!” – “I can’t afford ‘me’ anymore …”.

I can understand why a lot of people will put this movie down before they even see it, and I can understand why not a lot of people will consider it anything more than a bit of fluff to pass the time – but I can’t understand how anyone could see it and say the amount of bad things that have been said about it … I mean, I can’t believe how I gave it only 3 stars on my first viewing, I can’t believe it didn’t get me in the way it got me today. And the finale … it just doesn’t get better than Dakota letting her hair down and leading a ballet troupe armed with electric guitars.

April 2nd, 2005:

I love how nearly all Dakota Fanning movies seem to have come from some kind of story meeting where someone goes, “Okay, she’s an amazing actress… but she’s 11… who’re we gonna put with her? I know, she’s gonna need some-one to look after her – she’s a kid, afterall… but who?” So we have a giant talking cat, a psychotic killer, a hitman, a mentally retarded man, and here, a spoiled bitch. I may just steal this system when I run dry of ideas for my own screenplays, lol…

Once again Brittany Murphy makes her character 800x more sympathetic than she probably deserves (see last year’s Little Black Book, which I loved), and once again Dakota Fanning steals the movie.

Watching it reminded me of last year’s Raising Helen. Boaz Yakin is an interesting director, lots of visual ideas à la Bronwyn Hughes (Forces of Nature, Harriet the Spy). There’s a neat continuing idea about the spinning tea-cup ride at Coney Island, one beautiful image where Dakota is just staring at it; and in the final ballet recital scene, loads of little ballerinas carrying electric guitars.

Another long overdue review … this is going to get random and gushy ‘cos it’s amazing after countless viewings how this one continues to blow me away.

Everytime I watch this I think it’s going to lose something; but, everytime I watch it, it seems only to become more intense, to move and inspire me more. I need to watch it more often. There are so many more great moments in this movie than I ever come to it expecting. First and foremost the one thing that will satisfy almost anybody, I think, is the soundtrack. I’m constantly wracking my brains over why this movie is so hard to find these days (it’s on TCM here in the UK about twice annually, and you’ll find about as many VHS copies on eBay each year too … well worth grabbing, I promise) and the most logical seems to me that there are a lot of expensive music rights involved (including Lennon / McCartney’s “Give Peace a Chance”) (my other most prominent theory is simply to do with how stunningly relevant the movie remains, the cynic in me believing that no major media corporation with all today’s political pressure would want to make available a movie like this … I swear there’s every chance it would lead to uprising if enough people saw it).

Anyway, it’s one of the great movie soundtracks, the easiest comparison is to Cameron Crowe’s selections for his movies … the movie itself actually kinda resembles Almost Famous to me in a lot of ways – Bruce Davison looks a lot like Patrick Fugit in places, and his position in relation to the main story is similar, a spectator swept along by one of the 60s-70s’ many wild waves.

There’s the love story – the way I react to Linda (beautiful Kim Darby, another aspect of the movie that seems to improve with each viewing) and Simon (Bruce Davison) in this movie definitely leads me to believe it’s purely a personal thing, I can’t put into words how I feel my insides churning when these two look at each other … only to say it’s a similar feeling to that I get when talking to my own true love. There’s some amazing chemistry between these two actors. When they’re on the fairground ride, as she mouths, “do you love me?” to CSNY’s “Our House” – that would be the moment I instantly pinpoint as to why I love this movie so much. Well OK, that and the final line – “PROVE YOURSELF ALIVE!” – set to Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “The Circle Game”.

The violence in the end scenes had me shaking on this viewing even more than I did the first time. As with a number of other movies (Soldier Blue and Dawn of the Dead spring to mind), I found myself wondering if I was seeing a different cut altogether. It’s a truly horrifying finale – I finally recognised Bud Cort (Harold in Harold and Maude) this time round, and I think maybe that was a factor in how much the ending got to me – I was a lot more into his character, and watching him in those final scenes is almost too much to bear. It’s the way the movie swishes from the light to the dark – 30 minutes earlier you were laughing at him holding his nose in the presence of a couple of people smoking pot; suddenly his life is on the line for no reason but pure pathetic human stupidity. I think that’s what the movie captures best about James Simon Kunen’s book, the way Simon is a spectator, neither on one side nor the other with any particular level of commitment. Depending on how you view it, the movie arguably highlights the craziness, the lack of direction of the protestors just as much as it does that of the pigs, the politicians, the authorities. Kunen’s book is all about that ambivalent approach to things and as you might have noticed from this site’s URL, I’m all about ambivalence

I noticed a funny parallel between this movie and Almost Famous today, and no it’s not ‘cos I just watched a Cameron Crowe movie, I’d kinda noticed it before … it features a couple of characters, and the same characters at that, that I would love to have in my own life. Every time I see Maggie Gyllenhaal these days I’m reminded of her big sister role in this movie and she is so the ultimate big sister; and Mary McDonnell makes a fantastic mother – I love how she looks at Miss Farmer with such pity after the scene in the principal’s office … you can see so much in her performance of how people, perhaps especially parents, play an awkward role in life while their feelings are just as real as the rest of us – even when she’s cheering her daughter on in the Sparkle Motion dance troupe, you can kinda tell she’s not that behind the whole idea.

The other thing that struck me was how simple the movie really is in the end – I wrote in my journal a while ago about how I bought the Director’s Cut DVD (having already sold my original copy of the Theatrical Cut) and was already ordering another copy of the Theatrical Version only an hour in. I mean, this movie is complex, yeh … but it’s not exactly on the Ingmar Bergman end of the concentration scale. And why did Richard Kelly feel the need to explain it anyway? I think he really took a lot away from the movie with that cut. To me, at least, it seemed like he was saying, “Yeh, I thought about this … a lot ...” And to me, it’s not him who should’ve been thinking about it that much, his job was to come up with the mystery. It’s the audience’s job to think it to death if they want to. It’s like Phantasm in a way, and the Director’s Cut was like one of that movie’s many explanatory sequels.

In its original form, I think this movie is a masterpiece. Every single performance, major to minor role, is absolutely perfect, and there’s love and pain all over the place. Donnie Darko is part plain whacko, part Dennis the Menace, part superhero, part Alex in A Clockwork Orange. And it ends with that unforgettable cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World”. It really does get better, and I see more, every time I see it. I’ve only touched the tip of a whole iceberg of thoughts I have in these few paragraphs.

Oh yeh I had intended to put something into this review about how I think it’s about the cycle of violence but I guess this sentence is all you’re gonna get now ‘cos I’ve forgotten anything but the gist of it lol.

There’s not much left to say about this movie, and I’m surprised I’ve not reviewed it before. It’s visually among the most beautiful movies ever made. Audrey Tautou is like Hepburn brought back to life. The predominantly piano-based score by Yann Tiersen goes up there with Michael Nyman’s The Piano and Ennio Morricone’s Once Upon a Time in America on the “why the eff didn’t they even get nominated for an Oscar??”

All that said, I have to admit that for some reason the second half of the movie has disappointed me both this and the last time I saw it. I don’t know exactly why that is, possibly just a personal mood thing. Whatever the reason, I do tend to tune out over the last half hour, but it remains one of my all-time favourites because the startling glimmers of beauty – like Amélie guiding the blind man through the streets of Paris, her disruption of the mean old grocer’s day, her goldfish gazing up at her from the stream, the simply wonderful opening sequence of her as a young girl – are so frequent and mesmerizing, it’s impossible not to fall in love again every time. I’m gonna be harsh here and give it 4 stars but on a better day and for most people with a heart it’d be an easy 5.