When Hollywood puts its iron will to it, there really isn’t anything it can’t sequelize; take the existence of The Rage: Carrie 2 for example.
Anyone who has seen Brian De Palma’s magnificently lurid adaptation of Stephen King’s first novel would no doubt throw out numerous reasons why a sequel would violate all know laws of common sense, but the main reason is that the titular character freaking died at the end of the movie. While the small inconvenience of death never slowed the roll of a Freddy or a Jason, to attempt to resurrect Carrie White could only prove to be a disservice to everyone involved – however, to misquote Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcolm, “Hollywood finds a way” and in 1999 we got yet another unnecessary follow-up to a King classic.
To give the devil its due, the attempts The Rage: Carrie 2 makes to link itself to the first movie isn’t as truly awful as a Mangler 2 or a Lawnmower Man 2, but for all its laudable points, it proves that people really need to leave telekinetic teens the hell alone.
As a child, Rachel Lang was placed in foster care after her delusional mother was locked away after being convinced that her little girl was possessed by the devil, however, the truth of the matter is that, much like local legend Carrie White, Rachel has the ability to move things with her mind. Years pass and Rachel finds herself, like many others, simply trying to survive the vicious battlefield we all know as high school, but when her best friend, Lisa, suddenly commits suicide, she tries to find out the cause.
It seems that a group of the local jocks have been playing a disturbing, seduce and destroy game with the female members of the school, scoring each other on certain criteria including virginity and age and it was the callous treatment meat-headed football star Eric Stark that caused Lisa to hurl herself from the roof during school hours. While attempts are made to to nail the gang and their ringleader, Mark Bing, the fact that they all come from wealthy, influential families means that, predictably, they all get off scott free.
Pissed that Rachel was instrumental in trying to get evidence against them, Mark and his cabal of meathead idiots and mean girls decide to teach her a lesson and include her in their twisted games, but while they spin their twisted plans with the unwitting help of nice guy jock, Jesse, someone is noticing some disturbing parallels.
School counselor, Sue Snell, was the sole survivor of night Carrie White dismissed her school mates straight to hell with her funky powers and after figuring out that Rachel’s parentage ties directly with that with White’s and that they share the same abilities, she attempts to diffuse matters before another massacre can occur. However, nothing is going to stop Mark and his friends from continuing his vendetta, so a telekinetic lesson in instant karma seems all but inevitable.
Unsurprisingly, The Rage: Carrie 2 turned out to something of a stinker, with clumsy plotting, flat direction and leaden performances firmly distancing it from De Palma’s garish, horror juggernaut, however, I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t single out a few aspects of the sequel that attempted some truly admirable things. Toxic bullying in high school is hardly a new topic for teen horror, but director Katt Shea (who also helmed psycho/sexual Drew Barrymore thriller, Poison Ivy) makes sure it zeroes in on singling out rape culture for a rightfully good kicking as the villainous group of jocks target girls who are barely sixteen than thus are underage. Of course, they escape traditional justice for the usual reasons (money, male and mainly caucasian) leaving them prime for a slice of good, old horror justice which proves to be far more satisfying than your average type.
However, for all it’s good intentions, The Rage: Carrie 2 remains something of an irritating slog thanks to a script that essentially reworks the original movie without any of the pizzazz. Emily Bergl gives it the old college try and does an admittedly good job walking in Sissy Spacek, blood splattered shoes, but the weirdly amateurish production negates the majority of her performance as a bunch of 90s style over editing and overly-melodramatic, soap opera tone reduces the majority of the tension to mush.
It’s odd, because there’s more than a few, familiar faces lurking around the place with Jason London playing nice guy Jesse, Mena Suvari as the ill-fated Lisa and Rachel Blanchard playing a flunkie of the bullies who ultimately probably wishes she’d sprung for contact lenses instead of glasses during the bloody finale. However, some devastatingly clunky lines and a performance level that barely rates above an episode of Saved By The Bell unravels a lot of the drama.
Even the appearance of Amy Irving, desperately trying to connect the two movies, falls a little flat despite being the most intriguing plot thread in the film and considering we’re living in the time of the legacy sequel, her vain attempts to stop another telekinetic massacre could have sustained an entire movie itself if handled right.
However, after a movie that mostly plays like a cheapjack, horror version of She’s All That, that mostly botches its attempts to highlight toxic masculinity, Carrie 2 manages to avoid being a total loss thanks to the film going all in on trying to match the original movie’s bombastic, goretastic ending. Credit where it’s due, while that task proves to be next to impossible, it still puts in a truly spirited attempt that drags the entire movie into the realms of watchable. Dropping any pretext of reality and swapping out pig’s blood and proms for house parties and humiliating sex tapes, Shea let’s her hair down with an orgy of unrestrained gore and brutal payback as the collateral damage suddenly goes through the roof. Skulls are impaled by flying pokers, heads are severed by flying glass and, in its most on-the-nose moment, one of the chief perpetrators takes a harpoon to the crotch which exits through his rear, taking his offending bollocks with them.
Weirdly enough, this mostly stilted sequel wasn’t even the last word on King’s telekinetic terror-teen as we got a direct-to-TV remake barely three years later featuring May’s Angela Bettis and yet another, full blown redo in 2013 with Kick-Ass’ Chloë Grace Moretz in the title role.
A weak flick with a strong finish, The Rage: Carrie 2 proves to be yet another warning sign to anyone thinking there’s a quick and easy way to make money by trading heavily on the name of Stephen King by ways of a mostly unrelated sequel. How unrelated? Consider this: the screenplay wasn’t even a Carrie sequel to begin with, but was an “original” horror tale subtly altered from referencing a real-life, 1993, sex scandal that eventually got Carrie-ized after multiple similarities to King’s tale were noticed.
Yet despite all of this, this is one franchise that insisted on carrie-ing on.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 