The reason Carrie is still held in such high regard as a horror classic is very simple: it's all in the sheer directorial bravado. De Palma at the top of his game.
Comment
09/25/07
Carrie (1976)
90
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:42
Fresh:38
Rotten:4
Average Rating:8.1/10
Consensus: Carrie is a horrifying look at supernatural powers, high school cruelty, and teen angst -- and it brings us one of the most memorable and disturbing prom scenes in history.
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Synopsis: Brian De Palma's commercial breakout, based on a novel by Stephen King, helped launch a whole slew of teen-based horror films, and Carrie the blood-spattered prom queen has taken her throne in the... [More]
Starring: Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, John Travolta, William Katt
Director: Brian De Palma
Reviews for Carrie
Top CriticCarrie rivals The Shining for the title of greatest ever Stephen King adaptation.
09/25/07
Top CriticThe fierce sympathy it extends to its unfashionable central character puts the film a million miles above the contemporary line in sick exploitation.
02/09/06
Top CriticNo review available.
11/15/03
Unlike other examples of the horror genre, there are classic elements of tragedy that lend this gruesome tale a compelling edge.
04/17/01
Top CriticI might be the only person in the world who thinks Brian De Palma's 1976 classic thriller Carrie (now out on DVD) is one of the most overrated, disappointing horror films of all time, but I stand behind my review, and I swear I can knock down just about a
08/02/09
An exercise in high style that even the most unredeemably rational among moviegoers should find enormously enjoyable.
10/13/08
Top CriticCarrie is a modest but effective shock-suspense drama about a pubescent girl, her evangelical mother and cruel schoolmates.
10/07/08
Top Critic... [O]ne of the best horror films of the 1970s.
06/18/08
The first big hit directed by Brian De Palma.
02/10/08
The film has a strikingly unsettling mood that enhances its power and gives it an impact that the story would otherwise lack. Much of the credit, though, must go to Spacek, who so convincingly portrays Carrie's pain and her longing for acceptance.
09/25/07
Top CriticThis 1976 thriller, about a high school outcast (Sissy Spacek) who uses her telekinetic powers to massacre the graduating class, contains a number of interesting ideas. But as with most of his films, De Palma can't keep track of them.
09/25/07
The bulk of "Carrie" is not a gore-fest, but a prescient tone poem about the mental torture of social outcasts in high school halls in the pre-Columbine era.
07/15/07
Carrie might be a film about high school, but it was perhaps Brian De Palma's first completely mature film.
08/25/06
De Palma's Gothic thriller is at once trashy and lyrical, a nasty revenge story in which its misfit-Cinederella-like heroine (an exquisite Sissy Spacek) discovers her sexuality under the most terrifying conditions.
05/30/06
A total knockout. Piper Laurie gives a bravura performance as Carrie's religious fanatic mother, one of the creepiest movie characters ever.
01/24/06
No review available.
10/10/05
It is sometimes funny in a puzzling kind of way, it is generally overwrought in an irritating kind of way, and once in a while it is inappropriately touching.
05/09/05
Top CriticA nearly perfect film. The combination of pathos, shocks, and grand guignol excess is orchestrated with jaw-dropping precision by young Depalma, whose later films would pale by comparison.
03/31/05
Young director Brian DePalma is fast making his reputation in the genre of the suspense-horror film.
03/06/05
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