The book Carrie by horror legend Stephen King has been a popular victim for adaptations and remakes since the late seventies. Carrie White’s story has been adapted for the stage, the big screen, and broadcast television. With Halloween just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to talk about what makes Carrie a forever timeless tale
The young and miserable Carrie White is an immortal character for the lonely, the bullied, and the outcast, from Stephen King’s first published novel. King created a story that manages to evoke a sense of nostalgia from readers and watchers of all types. Nearly everybody has gone through the high school experience whether they embodied the role of a teenager who was popular and mean, much like Carrie’s antagonist Christine, or perhaps they were a quiet and sympathetic accomplice like Christine’s friend Sue. But there’s always the unlucky misunderstood one whose story is rarely told, much like Carrie White herself.
The novel Carrie was released in 1974, and packed with many controversial themes like violence, religious stigma, and superhuman abilities— throughout the story, the titular character becomes better acquainted with her telekinetic powers which leads her to seek revenge as she reaches her wits’ end at her senior prom. As Carrie’s story grew in popularity, the book became one of the most notorious banned books in libraries and schools.
Just two years after the book debuted, it had its first movie adaptation. Brian de Palma’s Carrie (1976) was a huge success, earning over $33 million dollars in box office revenue and many award nominations. Sissy Spacek starred as Carrie White; Spacek has had a steady career since her debut but more recently starred as Ruth Deaver in Hulu’s Castle Rock series, also paying homage to Stephen King. The movie also launched the film career of Amy Irving who was later seen in the horror flick Hide and Seek and the television drama Zero Hour. More well-known, this movie was one of John Travolta’s early roles, he played Billy Nolan, Christine’s boyfriend and of Carrie’s most vicious bullies.
This movie had a less favorable sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) which followed Carrie White’s younger half-sibling who was put in the foster care system as a child and has grown to struggle with the same telekinesis powers. Amy Irving reprises her previous character in the film, Sue Snell.
Sticking to chronological order, prior to the sequel came the short-lived Carrie musical which first launched in 1988. The musical has become an infamous disaster in Broadway history as it closed just three days after premiering, only managing 5 performances after its preview session. The musical found itself being revived off-Broadway decades later in 2012, quickly gaining a cult following and a cast recording, however despite this the show closed a little over a month after its premiere. Although it’s a flop, it seems to be forever ingrained in the mind of theater lovers and directors as it followed with two more revivals, one in London and the other in Los Angeles, and it was the subject in one of the musical episodes in the ever-popular CW series Riverdale.
Carrie has two other movie adaptations, released in 2002 and 2013, and a possible upcoming limited series on FX (announced in December 2019, pre-pandemic).
Carrie (2002) was a made-for-television movie that starred Angela Bettis as the title character, prior to this role Bettis played an anorexic psychiatric patient in Girl, Interrupted, and actor Patricia Clarkson starred as Carrie’s overly religious mother. The adaptation received heavy criticism for its editing and effects, as well as its pacing and depictions which viewers felt didn’t match up to the expectations of 21st-century horror films. Lastly is the 2013 Carrie film starring Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore as the Whites. Although it garnered much more success monetarily, it was distributed in theaters and earned $85 million in box office revenue, it was still a receiver of mixed reviews and it failed to live up to the hype of the original movie.
As one of Stephen King’s most notorious and life-changing works, Carrie White’s story remains a work of art that has yet to run out of relevance. Carrie will never grow out of style, there is no reason for it to; it tells a dangerous horror-filled story that the audience can oddly relate to as they relive the universal high school experience. It provides the perfect balance of horror, real life, and the supernatural.
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