The Rage: Carrie 2

The Rage: Carrie 2 - being more a remake than a sequel of the 70ies classic - is a good film for chilling out after a week of work or something like that. The creators were able to transport the basic ideas of the Stephen King novel (teenage problems)into this sequel. Only this is a reason to call this a good movie - because I think that Stephen King fans had to see much bad adaptions of the master´s work in the past. Another reason is that this movie is much better than all the other teen-horror-movies of the last years like I Know What You Did Last Summer (of course I could never say something bad about the first two Scream movies - seriously!). Carrie 2 handles teenager´s problems and conflict much better than other films and I think that it is a much better film to identificate with for young people. The "new Carrie" is - once again - a true outsider and not one of these upper class all-american teens like the ones in I Know...etc. The movie shows its sympathy for this outsider (a nice detail: in some scenes you can see the Marilyn Manson-poster at the wall of Rachel´s room - the icon of all angry outsiders). Another point: the horror violence is much harder than in the other teen movies, too. Everyone who likes gory horror should like this movie All in all, I could not say anything bad about this movie. Just take a look. 8 out of 10

Admittedly, "The Rage: Carrie 2" can't equal the quality established by its predecessor. But it's better than I expected it to be. Portraying an outcast high school student (Emily Bergl) discovering that she has telekinetic powers - don't worry; it gets explained - and using them to get revenge on her tormentors, it mostly repeats everything from the original. But the good aspect comes from how they set up some scenes and shock you (I really liked the shattering ball). Finally, the party at the end just might make your blood freeze.

Overall, this is a movie worth seeing, if only once. Of course, you'll have to see the original first, so as to understand everything that happens in this one. Also starring Amy Irving and Mena Suvari (right before she played Kevin Spacey's sexual fantasy in "American Beauty").

Let's see, thought an idea-starved movie exec one day, what can we do a sequel to now? Thoughts of the abandoned 'Freddie vs Jason' project pushed to the back of his mind, and realising that 'Titanic 2 - The Next Disaster' just wasn't working out, he thought back a bit further.

'Carrie'! Classic horror movie. How do we pull in the punters? Let's think. What was good about the first movie? Mmm, okay, blood, anger, school angst; yep, we can use those. Junk the religious symbolism (just not COOL these days), stick in a new, 21st-century sexually-aware Carrie figure (defeats the point of the movie, but not to worry), hire a hack script writer, and what do we have? Ah, a remake of the first movie in every detail - except for the good bits! That'll sell, then.

Yes, you read that right.

Emily Bergl is this films greatest asset. She can actually act and looks sincere. The only problem is that she's far too good looking for the role. That may sound shallow, but throughout the movie, we're supposed to get the impression that she's "ugly" and because of that, she's an outcast. Contrast this to Sissy Spacek in the original who looked plain enough to carry out the role of "ugly duckling". It was only her talent that let Bergl carry (pun not intended) out the role convincingly.

The antoganists are unusually shallow, especially when presented against the more modern bad guys in horror films, at least where you can see the bad guy. Though at least one of the bad girls is convincing as Rachel's new friend.

Jason Landon does an amiable job as Rachel's boyfriend and lends a lot of credibility to the final scene which, I must say, is a refreshing change from the hand coming out of the ground scenes popularized by the original Carrie.

All in all, a refreshingly entertaining and, dare I say, well done show.

This is a forgettable but offbeat teenage film. The visual effect is certainly better than the first Carrie (1976). The flashback of Carrie 1 and the return of Amy Irving starring as Sue Snell again also help.

Apart from the film itself per se, having seen Carrie and Carrie 2, I can't stop thinking why the problem of kids bullying with each other continues to be a problem in schools. In fact, this problem is not only between school kids, but also between grown ups in society. What's wrong with our society? What happened in the film is no more worse than the real event 'Columbine High School Massacre' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre). When are we going to solve this problem?

Perhaps showing this film to kids will make them understand how bad if they treat their mates badly.