The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

In Brian De Palma and Lawrence D. Cohen's 1976 supernatural horror film, Carrie, an adaptation of the first novel published by Stephen King, there's a pivotal moment in which Carrie White, the titular telekinetic protagonist, finally asserts herself to her fanatical mother, Margaret, and reveals her knowledge that her father, Ralph, despite Margaret's assertion that the Devil infiltrated his body and "carried him off," abandoned them for another woman. Who is this other woman that Ralph ran away with, and did he impregnate her with another telekinetic offspring? Both of those questions are answered in The Rage: Carrie 2 by screenwriter Rafael Moreu, who uses that single line of exposition from De Palma's bullied-revenge classic as the jumping-off point for a belated sequel that lacks the astonishingly animated atmosphere, campy sense of humor, suspenseful buildup, and colorful characters that made its predecessor alternately entertaining, tragic, and passionate.

In 1989, Rachel Lang (Kayla Campbell) witnesses her mother, Barbara (J. Smith-Cameron), being carted off to a psychiatric hospital after experiencing a schizophrenic breakdown in which she painted her entire house red in an attempt to ward off the Devil, who she believes is trying to possess her daughter. 10 years later, Rachel (Emily Bergl) is a senior at a remade Bates High School (the original remaining in ruins following Carrie White's 1976 prom-night massacre) temporarily living with her foster parents, Boyd and Emilyn (John Doe and Kate Skinner), and childhood dog, Walter. Although she's a social outcast, Rachel enjoys one intimate relationship with her best friend, Lisa Parker (Mena Suvari), who, on their morning bus ride to school, giddily reveals that she lost her virginity over the weekend to Eric Stark (Zachery Ty Bryan), a member of the Bulldogs football team. 

However, Eric and his fellow football buddies are competing in a juvenile game in which they have sex with girls, score them in a notebook, then casually break up with them, moving on to their next conquest. After Eric breaks up with Lisa, revealing that she was just another name on his list, she lethargically wanders onto the roof of her school and throws herself into the parking lot below, landing on a car. The trauma of losing her one true friend reawakens the telekinesis that's laid dormant in Rachel since childhood. 

Her social life appears to take a turn for the better when she's pursued by football player Jesse Ryan (Jason London), on whom she's been harboring an unspoken crush, raising the fury of head cheerleader Tracy Campbell (Charlotte Ayanna), who already has her sights set on Jesse and can't reconcile herself to the concept that he would prefer a so-called nobody to her. As retribution for implicating Eric in Lisa's suicide, Mark Bing (Dylan Bruno), Eric's best friend, conspires with Tracy and the rest of their popular friends to lure Rachel to an after-party at his mansion, where they intend to humiliate her and corrode her relationship with Jesse. 

Meanwhile, Sue Snell (Amy Irving), the sole survivor of Carrie White's rampage, has become the guidance counselor of Bates in an effort to dissuade another bullied student from taking the path that her deceased classmate took. Detecting signs that Rachel may share the same paranormal ability, Sue breaks Barbara out of Arkham to reunite her with Rachel so she can persuade her to seek treatment to get her telekinesis under control before it's too late.

From the jump, The Rage: Carrie 2 doesn't even feel like a supernatural horror film, and that's partially because director Katt Shea exhibits zero ability to generate an atmosphere of impending doom leading up to the third-act telekinetic bloodbath, which is withheld until the final 20 minutes of the runtime. Prior to the inevitable moment in which Rachel's titular rage is unleashed on a crowd of unsuspecting, malicious partygoers, The Rage: Carrie 2 unfolds more along the lines of a stupid direct-to-video teen soap opera. An inordinate amount of emphasis is placed on a big end-of-the-year football game between the Bulldogs and their rival team, the Devils, and the shallow relationship drama that manifests from the disparate blending of a beloved, handsome jock and a quiet, unattractive outsider that threatens the natural order of the high school hierarchy. 

The pace is punishingly slow, and Shea doesn't even put in the effort to make her direction logical. One night, after Rachel's dog, Walter, is run over by a trucker who doesn't bother to stop and survey the damage he's caused, Rachel scoops up Walter in her arms (who looks remarkably fine for a freshly run-over dog) and desperately attempts to flag down a driver to take them to a vet. Conveniently enough, Jesse happens to be driving down the street following an underwhelming date with Tracy, so Rachel stands in front of his car. Jesse gives no reaction, listlessly continuing to drive as though Rachel and Walter are invisible, until a telekinetic crack suddenly manifests on his windshield and motivates him to stomp on the brake -- a bizarre happening that Jesse ridiculously chalks up to an invisible rock thrown by nobody. 

Throughout The Rage: Carrie 2, cinematographer Donald M. Morgan switches from color to monochrome at random points, possibly to symbolize how Rachel's anger and stress blind her to color, but the conceit feels arbitrarily motivated and gimmicky. These instances include when a spoon starts vibrating on a counter, the football jocks harass Rachel outside her home, and Rachel pursues her remaining bullies throughout Mark's house. Morgan spins the camera around Rachel as she undergoes a panic attack to convey her fear and disorientation, and in his most stupid-looking technique, shakes the camera up and down while the bullies laugh at Rachel, blurring their faces into resemblances of the faceless, vibrating apparitions from Jacob's Ladder. 

Moreu's boring and melodramatic plot bears almost no relation to the original Carrie. Aside from reinstating Sue Snell, Moreu conceives a contrived kinship between Rachel Lang and Carrie White to establish connective tissue: after Ralph White abandoned Margaret, he impregnated Barbara Lang with Rachel, transferring his telekinesis to her in the process. Between Margaret and Barbara, Ralph clearly has a type: mentally unstable, religious zealots. (Although he doesn't value them enough to stick around long enough to actually meet the daughters he creates.) Aside from the nonphysical, spontaneous movement of objects -- Sue's coffee cup sliding off her desk, her snow dome exploding, lockers opening and slamming shut -- neither Moreu nor Shea knows how to plant the seeds to forewarn the climactic after-party bloodbath that will pay off the preceding melodrama. 

Moreu exploits the still-relevant issue of teen suicide and depression as a catalyst for the reemergence of Rachel's telekinesis, only to drop the distasteful plot device once Rachel begins dating Jesse and seemingly finds a new friend in Monica Jones (Rachel Blanchard). Rachel's sexuality is never fully clarified; Moreu gestures toward a homosexual affection for Lisa, and Rachel even refers to herself as a dyke when asked out by Mark, yet she falls almost instantly in love with Jesse. Was that just a ploy to ward off Mark's advances? 

Moreu inspires sympathy for neither the perpetrators nor their underage victims. Eric is terrified of being expelled from the big football game where scouts will be in attendance, therefore rejected from a good Catholic school, and forced to face charges for statutory rape. Boo-hoo. Lisa commits suicide because Eric bedded and dumped her. Boo-hoo. If these girls are stupid enough to spread their legs for the first handsome football jock that locks eyes with them, then kill themselves because said jock didn't intend to marry them after, that's on them. Don't expect a pity party from me. 

In the one subtle layer of social commentary evident in Moreu's script, he insinuates that the adults -- Eric's lawyer father (Gordon Clapp), the Bulldogs' bullying coach (Steven Ford), and the corrupt senior D.A. (Robert D. Raiford) -- condone and beget the boys' aggression and narcissism. In one disturbing instance, to humiliate Mark for making a "half-assed block," Coach Walsh forces him to stand up in front of his entire team and drop his pants, underwear included. 

Recognizing that he can't replicate the iconic pig-blood-at-the-prom prank that ignited Carrie White's telekinetic rampage, Moreu contrives his own ambush, one that's stupid, incoherent, overelaborate, and dependent on a cavalcade of laughable contrivances. First, Mark gifts Jesse the keys to his parents' unoccupied summer home so he can have a romantic date with Rachel. As hoped for, Jesse and Rachel have sex, which Mark and his friends covertly film from outside (even though the curtains appear closed). Then, while Jesse is talking to a scout after winning the football game against the Devils, Brad Winter (Justin Urich) tells Rachel that Jesse said he'll be a while and to go to Mark's party without him. She's given a ride by her new "friend," Monica. During Jesse's conversation with the scout, Tracy has enough time to vandalize his car, spray-painting "The Devils Rule" and "Bulldogs Suck," and slashing his tires. Once Jesse leaves school, he's greeted instantly by Tracy, who offers to drive him to Mark's, but not before she stops off at her home first to "change," when in actuality it's to stall and unsuccessfully seduce him. 

With Jesse not yet arrived, and Rachel fully convinced that these popular kids are now her friends, the bullies now have the perfect opportunity to... reveal their sex game to Rachel, deceive her into believing that Jesse used her for points, and project the footage of her and Jesse having sex on an enlarged TV screen for all the partygoers to see and laugh at and point at like children who find the mere sight of sex hilarious. Entirely absent are the simplicity, ingenuity, and coherent, identifiable humiliation of having a bucket of pig blood dumped on your head in front of your entire school. 

Moreu attempts to inject a note of grim humor into the otherwise dour and humorless proceedings via a couple misplaced one-liners that fall flat on their faces. After Lisa hurls herself onto a car, Chuck Potter (Elijah Craig) arrives at the scene with his trusty video camera and says, "Oh man, whose car is this?" As proud outcast Arnold (Eddie Kaye Thomas) lies on the hood of his car watching Mark's house go up in flames as multiple partygoers run and scream for their lives, he bemoans to his equally apathetic friends, "Man, we're missing one killer party." Get it? Killer party? Hardy-har-har. All these lines accomplish is expressing the speakers' unrealistic level of callousness toward their peers. No explanation is provided for Jesse's automatic infatuation with Rachel. He prefers her over Tracy's conventional attractiveness and high social standing because... she's unattractive and unlike everyone else? Remind me when those traits became automatic turn-ons. 

The filmmakers' portrayal of psychiatric hospitals is blatantly absurd: patients are permitted to wander the hallways freely, a man bangs his head repeatedly against a gate without interference, Barbara is able to effortlessly sneak out while the receptionist bends down to retrieve Sue's purse. Are there no surveillance cameras in this hospital? 

Regardless of her kinship to Carrie, Rachel is too boring, brooding, and bitter a protagonist to sympathize with. Unlike her half-sister, she shows no interest in learning about or experimenting with her telekinetic gift, preferring to suppress it via closing her eyes and repeatedly ordering herself to stop whenever it flares up. She's unreasonably antagonistic to Sue's earnest attempts at help and maternal friendship. When the football jocks terrorize her outside her home Ghostface-style, Rachel betrays a startling dearth of intelligence and judgment. Somehow, she fails to recognize Mark's distinctive voice over the phone even after hearing it in person at her workplace. Furthermore, when he calls her a "dyke," a very specific slur that she used against herself, that should confirm his identity in her head. Instead, she once again asks, "Who is this?" Has the trauma of Lisa's suicide afflicted her with amnesia? Although Rachel sees the face of Eric as he opens her window, she elects to withdraw her complaint to the police as soon as her foster parents arrive home. When Boyd reasonably asks what the hell happened, referring to a brick that smashed their kitchen window, Rachel feigns a preposterously rude indifference. Bizarrely, she forgives the jocks after they nonchalantly admit their guilt and issue a most halfhearted apology. "Look, I'm sorry about the other night at your house," says Mark. "It was just a bunch of guys being guys." Potential murderers, is more like it. "Jesse told us to cool it and explain everything. So, no hard feelings? Peace?" asks Brad. Say what? You haven't explained anything. "Well, as long as you pour me a drink, alright," Rachel agrees. Yeah, a cup of margarita makes up for a broken window and threatening phone call, I guess. 

Supposedly, Rachel is traumatized by the sudden suicide of her best friend, as evinced by the manifestation of her telekinesis, yet she appears to move on quite successfully at the start of her romance with Jesse. Lisa who? Speaking of whom, Jesse is the lone football jock with a heart of gold to match his Hollywood good looks and social stardom. His malicious teammates, on the other hand, lack distinction; Mark, Eric, Brad, and Chuck are misogynistic pigs who play for the same team, bed and dump girls for their made-up point system, and seek revenge on Rachel for forcing one of their own to almost take accountability for his own actions (even after his father and the D.A. exonerate him). Initially, Eric shows a sliver of remorse for breaking Lisa's heart, but is more concerned with facing statutory rape charges and being expelled from the upcoming game of the year. Rachel Blanchard is gifted the most fun and memorable bully role; Monica Jones is a vivacious, deceitful manipulator who blends the apparent friendliness of 1976 Sue Snell with the exuberant cunning and sadism of Tina Blake. 

When Barbara is first taken away, a cop promises young Rachel that he's going to take her "someplace real nice, with a family, a really nice family." What a crock of shit that turns out to be. Boyd is a stereotypically strict, unloving foster father who slaps Rachel across the face for spending the night with her boyfriend (was he hoping she'd save herself for him?) and barks, "As long as you're under this roof, you respect us as your parents and treat us like that!" Which would carry more validation if he didn't casually admit to valuing Rachel for the monthly $300 she brings him and his wife. As for Emilyn, she's the softer-spoken dishrag who stands behind her husband, gasps in shock at his abusive outbursts, but stays nice and silent. She's not so innocent herself, either, forbidding Walter in their house at night because his "dog noises" allegedly keep her awake. 

With the distinct feel of either a last-second addition or a role that was designed to be much larger in the script, Deborah Meschan, Monica's wannabe, tryhard friend, materializes out of thin air without so much as a character name or many lines beyond "Sorry," "You look beautiful," and "You look really pretty." A pathetic, meek slave to the popular crowd, Deborah will do anything to be accepted, including steering the wheel of Monica's car from the passenger seat, supplying her friend/superior with her mascara and dress on command, issuing the aforementioned generic compliments, complying with Monica's insistence that she needs lipstick, and laughing mindlessly at Rachel along with the crowd. One gets the impression that if Rachel's admittance into the popular crowd wasn't a ruse, Deborah would consider her a friend as well. 

Despite existing on separate physical planes, Emily Bergl and Jason London evince a tender, passionate chemistry in their playful interactions, yearning glances, and in the prolonged manner in which they gaze or smile into each other's eyes. Bergl crafts an interpretation of Rachel far divorced from Sissy Spacek's as Carrie, investing her outcast with a degree of self-assuredness, sardonic wit, and stoicism, betraying her long-held melancholy and loneliness in her mournful eyes but adamantly refusing to cry. Once she shifts into villain mode, Bergl channels the legendary body language of her half-sister, widening her eyes with rage, making her posture stock-still, walking slowly with one foot menacingly in front of the other. When Rachel is in a good mood, Bergl flashes a charming, guileless smile; when wronged, she shoots a vindictive glare intimidating enough to freeze your blood. You do not want to make this woman angry! However, the CGI tattoo thorns used to augment Rachel's transformation make no symbolic sense, nor are they a match for the pig blood that helped solidify Spacek as an indelible, nightmarish symbol of unconstrained feminine fury.

As the chief antagonist, Dylan Bruno looks conspicuously too old to convince as a high school senior, yet he gives one of the most purely enjoyable performances of the movie, using his husky, masculine voice and disarming smile to conceal Mark's malicious intentions. When he apologizes to Jessie for hurting Rachel and jeopardizing their lifelong friendship, Bruno invests the apology with remarkably convincing sincerity. Beneath his macho, heartless exterior, Bruno displays an admirable, if misguided, loyalty to his friends that underlies his inexcusably cruel actions, making Mark likable despite his blatant wickedness. As the sole returnee from De Palma's original Carrie, Amy Irving conveys soft-spoken compassion, undeterred patience, and determination to get through to Rachel, who she may be unconsciously using as a surrogate for the lost, lonely teenage girl she failed to help 23 years prior.

Recognizing how vastly the presentation of violence in horror cinema has evolved in the 23-year interval since Carrie, Moreu and Shea adopt something of a slasher-movie aesthetic for their obligatory telekinetic massacre in the final 20 minutes. In the prom-night massacre of Carrie, De Palma opted for a low-key approach, depicting a gymnasium of panicked prom-goers running for their lives, screaming at the top of their lungs, struggling to pry open locked doors to no avail, being sprayed over tables or down from windows by a fire hose gone rogue. With the exception of a brief shot of a basketball backboard slamming into Miss Collins' stomach, Principal Morton and Mr. Fromm receiving a simultaneous electrocution, and the latter's arm catching on fire, De Palma kept the physical violence to a minimum, emphasizing a chilling atmosphere of panic and helplessness. Shea and Moreu lay waste to such restraint, devising a handful of gruesomely creative and individually specific kills suitable for those on the receiving end. 

Chuck is decapitated by the flying shards of shattered glass doors. Two pairs of murders kill two birds with one stone, as the intentional killing of one character unintentionally results in the death of another: a fireplace poker stabs Brad in the back of the head, exits through his forehead, protrudes through the peephole of Mark's front door, pierces Sue's forehead, and exits through the back of her head, pinning them to the opposite sides of the door; Monica's glasses implode into her eyes, causing her to blindly fire a harpoon into Eric's groin. A series of flying discs stab Deborah to death, although choppy editing obscures which specific parts of her body are stabbed besides the first stab to her throat. 

Fittingly, the most painful and prolonged death is reserved for Mark, the mastermind behind the inciting prank, who's thrown into his own pool, knocked under by his telekinetically activated cover, and left to drown. Shea and editor Richard Nord refuse to cut away, immersing us in Mark's unimaginable agony and daring us to feel even a scintilla of sympathy. (I personally did not.) The attention to visual and aural detail is discomfortingly impressive; blood disgorges from Mark's mouth (perhaps a little too quickly to be entirely realistic), the sound of his gulping as the water rushes into his lungs is amplified. Following a desperate struggle for escape, his body goes motionless, sinking slowly to the floor, his eyes wide and mouth agape.

Editor Nord overdoses on archival footage from Carrie, interspersing quiet scenes with strident flashbacks of Carrie White's locker-room assault and prom-night massacre, shrouding them all in a hellfire-red glow. If Shea and Nord are trying to draw a connection between both films, they only succeed in evoking a much better and more entertaining one. In one head-scratching moment, Nord intercuts Sue's commemoration of Lisa over an intercom with a slow-motion shot of Rachel running through the woods behind Bates High to an unclear destination, seemingly to honor Lisa's memory. Maybe the tree where they once took a picture with Walter? 

Danny B. Harvey composes a maudlin piano melody that Shea obnoxiously overplays to accentuate sad moments, e.g., Rachel sleeping in a closet beside Walter after Barbara is carted off to Arkham, where silence would have made a stronger impact. Rachel is established to live in a modest, middle-class house with Boyd and Emilyn, complete with a kitchen and bedroom. However, in the set piece in which she's harassed after taking a shower, the house inexplicably morphs into a trailer. Was this scene shot before the production designer found a home, or am I to believe this couple is so poor that they couldn't afford to have a shower installed in their home, and so had to buy a trailer equipped with one? 

Initially, The Rage: Carrie 2 began life as an original horror story, rather than an indirect sequel to De Palma's 1976 Stephen King adaptation, titled The Curse. Production was scheduled to commence in 1996 with Emily Bergl still cast in the lead role. However, for whatever reason, production stalled for two years, during which time the plot was rewritten as a sequel to Carrie. God only knows why. While it would be a fool's errand to ponder how differently and potentially superior this movie might have been had it remained on its original course as The Curse, dissociated completely from its iconic (and wholly unearned) namesake, one can only imagine that the end result would have almost had to have been more inspired than this pointless, formulaic, and histrionic snoozefest.

4.4/10