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Date Posted: 08:04:41 06/09/01 Sat
Author: Griff
Subject: Ignore my review then, see if I care! Boo hoo! Here's another one anyway...


THE RAGE: CARRIE 2


When a sequel with barely any characters from the first film, a new setting and a virtually unconnected plot is made 23 years after the original, you’ve got to wonder: why? What’s the point? Why bother? After watching it you’ll be thinking much the same because this sequel to Brian De Palma’s much over-rated Carrie offers no explanation as to why it exists – other than the monetary one, obviously. At least when Psycho II came along it had something new to say and was surprisingly credible; this, rather predictably, does nothing but dutifully plod through the exact same plot as the original.

Using the lamest relative-of-the-original-character gimmick since Teen Wolf Too, this introduces us to Rachel (Emily Bergl), a handy long-lost half sister to Carrie who has the same mental abilities – which are explained away as being hereditary! Erm, if you say so. She’s an outsider, the high school elite torment her, she takes her revenge using telekenesis. That’s pretty much it apart from an entirely unconvincing romance between Rachel and kind-hearted jock Jesse, played with all the presence and charisma of year-old pie by Jason London. There’s a void in the middle of the film where their relationship should be because it offers us not a single scene to explain their attraction.

One of the few things this has going for it is Emily Bergl, whose smile lights up both her face and the screen and who’s able to infuse her underwritten character with an extra dimension, something none of the other actors manage. The trick played on her by the jocks is painful to watch because she’s at least engendered some sympathy and what they do is so nasty; they also keep a book scoring the girls in the school they’ve slept with and dumped, and this cruelty is really the only time the movie manages to rise above its apathetic shuffle. Even so, it’s been done before – the writer can’t even be bothered to change the high school setting.

The other thin strand connecting this to the original film is the reappearance of Amy Irving, whose character is now a counsellor at Rachel’s school. She sees the signs and knows that Rachel is going down the same road as Carrie – no shit – so tries to help her out. There’s very little reason for her to be there; she hardly connects with the plot aside from supplying the clunky scenes that explain Rachel’s parentage and she winds up getting a completely dignity-free send-off into the bargain. I liked the bit where she takes Rachel to see the ruins of the original high school – still there after two decades! Throw in a ‘shock’ ending and the obligatory genre in-jokes (a reference to Scream) and that’s your lot. Run-of-the-mill rather than bad, Carrie 2 is completely, utterly and totally redundant.



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