13 Nights of Shocktober: One Cut of the Dead

by A.J.

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween

“We keep rolling!”

 

One Cut of the Dead

It is hard to talk or write about One Cut of the Dead not just because of its twists and turns but because of how far it twists and turns. In fact, it turns into a different genre and essentially a different movie. In addition to shifting genres, it also has a very unusual structure. The first 37 minutes tell the story you expect from the synopsis: a low budget independent horror movie crew are attacked by zombies while filming a zombie movie. Then the film flashes back and this is where it may lose people who wanted a pure zombie movie. However, this is also where it becomes something unique and very entertaining. I do not believe in vague recommendations (“The less you know, the better” or “Go in knowing as little as possible”), so my review will contain at least one major spoiler. Although, maybe spoiler is not the right word because I think knowing where this movie is going does not diminish the fun experience of watching it get there. For now I will say that even if you do not like zombies, there is a good chance you will still enjoy One Cut of the Dead. 

The film opens on the set of a zombie movie with an intense director (Takayuki Hamatsu), berating an actress for needing 42 takes for an emotional scene. Two things are immediately clear: this is a found footage movie and it is all in one take. During a break real zombies turn up and attack and terrorize the cast and crew. The lead actress now finds herself living out what she had been only pretending. Even with all that happens, this feels like the movie’s most conventional chapter (the novelty of found footage wore off long ago), although it being done in one take is impressive. 

And now for something completely different (Spoiler Alert):

The second chapter flashes back to one month earlier to the same director, Takayuki Higurashi, being approached by executives to direct a live broadcast of a zombie movie to launch the brand new Zombie Channel. And they want it in one take and they want it ready to shoot in just one month. Takayuki laughs because he thinks they are joking, but they are not. He’s not at a point in his career where he can turn down the offer, and it is the perfect opportunity to reconnect with his daughter Mao (Mao Higurashi), a production assistant who takes movies very seriously. So, this is actually a movie about a low budget zombie movie crew struggling to make a low budget zombie movie about a low budget zombie movie crew being attacked by zombies. This shift in genre (now a comedy), style (no longer a found footage movie), plot, and characters feels jarring at first because a new movie starts after you’ve been watching for more than half an hour. However, this “new movie” with essentially the same plot (minus a real zombie attack) is very engaging, very funny, and it is interesting to see the origins of the film within the film. 

The third act is the behind the scenes of the live broadcast and it is full blown chaotic comedy. Takayuki and his wife, Harumi (Harumi Shuhama), a former actress who had to retire because she would get too caught up in her roles, have to sub in at the last minute for injured cast members. Harumi does indeed get too caught up in her role and is unable to come out of her character. An alcoholic actor relapses, equipment breaks, crew members have to quickly make signs to hold off camera to let the actors know about last minute changes, to name just a few things that go wrong. Even knowing how the broadcast turns out does not take away from any of the excitement of watching it come together. 

The Japanese title translates to Don’t Stop the Camera! and that is a more fitting title since it applies to both storylines. This began as a student project, which is why many of the characters have the same names as their performers. It turned into a very low budget indie movie that slowly but surely impressed audiences and built a following as it played in different film festivals. There’s no doubt that what made this movie stand out and connect is its unusual structure. The shift after the first act provides a different perspective and appreciation of the found footage horror movie within a movie. Whether you like horror movies or not, or zombie movies or not, One Cut of the Dead has something for everyone and, taken all together, is a great movie. Happy Halloween!

One Cut of the Dead is available to stream on Shudder and rent from Amazon Prime.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Night of the Zoopocalypse

by A.J.

Night 12: Family Night

“You have not been paying attention to the lessons of the late night movie.”

Night of the Zoopocalypse

It is hard for parents to find something to watch with their kids, especially small or easily scared kids, around Halloween. There are some well known titles of course (The Addams Family, Hotel Translyvania, Hocus Pocus among others), but it is easy, at least for grown ups, to burn out on watching the same thing again and again. Kids want to feel like they’ve watched something scary but without actually being scared, at least not too much. It is a difficult balance. The animated movie Night of the Zoopocalypse went under the radar when it was released in 2025, perhaps because of marketing, perhaps because it is a fairly strange movie, skirting the line of a horror themed family movie and a horror movie that happens to be a kids movie. 

One night after the Colepepper Zoo closes and the humans have left for the night a tiny glowing pink meteor crashes into the barnyard section only to be eaten by a very cute but curious bunny. It undergoes a transformation and becomes Bunny-Zero. Any other animals it bites turn into zombie mutant versions of themselves. It is up to a small group of uninfected animals, but mainly Gracie the wolf, to figure out a way to stop Bunny Zero and cure the infected animals. 

After Gracie, the other central character is Dan, a mountain lion who was recently captured and brought to the zoo. The other animals don’t trust him because he is an actual wild animal. His main concern is getting back to the wild, not helping the zoo animals, but Gracie overcomes her suspicions of Dan and ends up saving him a few times. Gracie is clever and resilient and determined. Dan is strong and helps her a lot but there’s no question that Gracie is the hero. The other animals in their “pack” are a capybara, an ostrich, a gorilla, an obnoxious proboscis monkey, and an adorable pygmy hippo named Poot. My favorite character is Xavier, the French Canadian lemur who fakes being sick so he can stay up late watching movies on the TV in the infirmary. He’s seen so many that he quickly realizes they are in a “late night movie” and calls out the basic structure of how things will play out (This feels like…act two! …That means it will get even stranger. The heroes will be betrayed!”). Xavier is lively comic relief, but more importantly he serves as a sort of guide for younger viewers, explaining more or less what to expect next. 

Somewhat surprisingly the animal characters behave pretty much like characters in a grown up horror movie. The heroes are indeed betrayed by one of the more selfish animals. Others are too cowardly to help Gracie with her plan to stop Bunny Zero. Gracie struggles hard to keep everyone together. Also, like in a grown up horror movie, the supporting characters get infected one by one. Xavier names the infected animals “gum-beasts,” which is a pretty good description because they are not exactly zombies (they are alive) and they take on a colorful glowing gummy look. They can be dismembered and their body parts can move around on their own.  One scene that could be frightening or funny depending on your child’s sensibilities has the gorilla putting its body parts back together out of order. Gracie and Dan’s reaction tells us that it is strange but also amusing. The most surprising thing about the whole movie was the subtle references to John Carpenter’s The Thing. Not only is this a movie about an alien life form that absorbs and imitates what it touches, but at one point one of the gum-beasts sprouts spider legs and crawls away. 

Night of the Zoopocalypse can sound pretty intense but directors Rodrigo Perez-Castro and Ricardo Curtis took the right steps to make this palatable to younger audiences. The bright color palette, exaggerated regular animal design, and soft, gummy textured design of the gum-beasts are visual reminders that this is all in the realm of make-believe. The key turn in the movie comes when Gracie realizes that being a gum-beast is reversible and her goal switches from survival to rescue; at this point the movie becomes less intense in tone if not set pieces (Bunny Zero turns very large and monstrous for the final showdown). There is a moment of despair when Gracie’s first plan doesn’t work, but she has a good memory and eventually figures out what needs to happen. I suppose Gracie is a “final girl” even though she is a wolf. She is observant, resourceful, determined, and her concern for others does not stop in the face of danger. The characters in The Thing would have had an easier time fighting their shape shifting alien monster if Gracie was with them.

Night of the Zoopocalypse is available to stream on Peacock, Prime Video, Tubi and The Roku Channel.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Blob (1988)

by A.J.

Night 11: Remake Night

“Terror has no shape.”

The Blob (1988)

Horror in the 1980s was dominated by slashers, sequels, and remakes. When it came to remakes, this may have been the only era in which they were justifiable. Advances in special effects technology and makeup, along with the replacement of the oppressive Production Code with the ratings system, allowed filmmakers to do and show more than previous films while also putting their own stamp on the material. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) are widely recognized as the best horror remakes, perhaps the best remakes of any genre. I would argue that the 1988 remake of The Blob also belongs in the top ranks of remakes as well. 

 

The creative team of director Chuck Russell and screenwriter Frank Darabont did not make very many movies, but they made some good ones. They were the main creative force behind A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, usually considered the best of the Nightmare sequels. The Blob was their follow up. There are enough changes that this could be considered a reboot or reimagining, but the basic premise of the original remains: a goopy, amorphous slime life form crashes to Earth on the outskirts of a small town and threatens to take over the town and then the world. Like in the original, it is the teenagers who are the heroes, but unlike the original they do not work with the police and authorities. In this version, authority cannot be trusted. The lead teens are Shawnee Smith as Meg, the cheerleader, Kevin Dillon as Flagg, the mysterious motorcycle riding outsider, and Donovan Leitch, Jr as Paul, the letterman jacket-wearing athlete. At first it seems like Donovan is set up to be the lead, but he’s easily outshown by Dillon’s rogue mystique. The real lead turns out to be Shawnee Smith; she is the only consistently reliable character and though she has to be rescued she also rescues others and his wielding an assault rifle by the end of the movie. 

To keep their remake from being a rehash, Russell and Darabont decided to draw on Hitchcock and do the unexpected to throw off the audience. So, they decided to break the unwritten rule that kids and dogs do not die in horror movies. No matter how sympathetic or central a character may seem, they are all equally in danger from the blob. This often gets called a “mean movie” but I disagree. Russell and Darabont take the time for the audience to get to know the people that live in this small town. None of the characters, no matter how big or small their role, feel disposable, aside from the mostly nameless government agents in hazmat suits. So death matters and the horror of a pink slime is emotional as well as visual. 

Nearly every special effects shot holds up and looks impressive. Chuck Russell thought that if a special effect is done only one way the audience will get used to it, so the blob was created and shown in different ways. Silk sacks were filled with the blob and squeezed to the point that the sack became invisible. Process shots, green screen, miniatures, and gravity effects (putting a set on its side or upside down to make the blob look like it is defying gravity) were all put to use. The scene of the blob attacking a movie theater uses a strobe light effect that makes the whole sequence feel very chaotic and frantic, but Russell admits in the DVD/Blu-ray commentary that the strobe light was also used to cover up what he thought were the movie’s weakest effects (Trigger warning to viewers with photosensitive epilepsy or aversion to strobe lights). He also admits that the effects team proved him wrong about a life size dummy for a death by blob in a phone booth. The effect worked and ends up being one of the most intense deaths of the movie. Surprisingly, the most impressive stunt in the movie has nothing to do with the blob. It happens when Flagg jumps a broken bridge while being pursued by trucks and helicopter all in one well rehearsed shot.

While I do not believe that this film is mean, I do readily admit that it can be difficult to watch. It is goopy and gory and gross. However, this is not a geek show. This is not a slasher where the whole point is to watch disposable characters die one by one in elaborate ways. Russell and Darabont were smart enough to know that the weakest part of The Blob is that the villain is a pile of goo, so they created strong characters and focused on recognizable themes to engage the audience on an intellectual level while the effects and makeup team worked their magic to engage the audience on a visceral level.

The Blob (1988) is available to stream on Tubi and Plutotv.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore)

by A.J. 

Night 10: Weird Wild Stuff Night

“Dellamorte Dellamore bids you farewell.”

Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore)

Cemetery Man fits nicely into one of my favorite subgenres: weird, wild stuff. Though it is in English and stars Englishman Rupert Everett, this is actually an Italian film originally titled Dellamorte Dellamore (Of Death Of Love) directed by Michele Soavi, whose mentors included Dario Argento (Suspiria) and Lamberto Bava (Demons). Dellamorte Dellamore is based on the novel by Tiziano Sclavi, who also created the graphic novel Dylan Dog, about a paranormal investigator dealing with all kinds of supernatural horrors–the two works turn out to be curiously intertwined. This is that rare kind of movie that has to be seen to be believed; it is certainly not for everyone but it is so bizarre that you want everyone to see it.

 

What makes it so weird and wild? Well.. Rupert Everett plays Francesco Dellamorte, the melancholy caretaker of a provincial Italian cemetery for the village of Buffalora. His regular duties include groundskeeping, burying the dead, and shooting them in the head when they come back seven days later. This happens so often that, unphased, he shoots one while on the phone after he’s gotten out of the shower, since he lives at the cemetery. Dellamorte falls in love at first sight with a young beautiful widow, which is a big deal for him because he is impotent. She’s uninterested in him until he offers to show her the cemetery’s ossuary. They end up having sex on her husband’s grave because, she says, she never kept any secrets from him. Unfortunately her husband comes back, attacks, and kills her. This happens in the first 20 minutes and is only the beginning of Dellamorte’s troubles. 

The zombies, or returners as Dellamorte calls them, range from mild (grey makeup and blank zombie expression) to monstrous (mutilated and grotesque). The most spectacular return is the teenage boy who died in a motorcycle accident and then bursts out of his grave on his motorcycle. Even with all the returners, this is by no means a zombie movie. In fact there isn’t really a central plot, but the guiding line is Dellamorte’s melancholy attitude towards the “living dead and the dying living” in all of his encounters. Eventually he meets the double of the beautiful widow (also played by Anna Falchi), but they cannot be together because she has phallophobia. So, he seeks out an operation… He also has a vision of a giant grim reaper that tells him to stop killing the dead and start killing the living. So, that’s just what he does. Also living at the cemetery with Dellamorte is his childish assistant, Ghaghi (French actor François Hadji-Lazaro) who can speak only one word, “gna.” Ghaghi develops a crush on the mayor’s teenage daughter which is problematic because of the age gap, and also she is a talking severed head. This of course leads to problems with the mayor. 

Although this is based on Sclavi’s novel, not his popular Dylan Dog graphic novels, the filmmakers knew that fans thought of the two projects as so thematically linked that Dellamorte Dellamore was an unofficial Dylan Dog movie. And fans could only accept Rupert Everett as Dellamorte/Dylan Dog because Sclavi specifically based the look of Dylan Dog on Rupert Everett. So, producers offered the role to Everett hoping that 1) he would accept the role otherwise they might not even be able to make the movie and 2) that he did not know how essential he was to the very existence of the project because that might encourage him or his agent to raise his salary. Whether he knew about Dylan Dog or not, Everett took the role and even rejected a more conventional, less weird version of the script. 

Dellamorte Dellamore was released in Italy in 1994 but was not released in the U.S. until 1996 where it flopped and was panned by critics. Since then however it has gone on to have a cult following. Soavi said that he wanted to make a movie that was cynical and amoral and in many ways he did. This is a dark, melancholy, and even disturbing movie at times. It is also absurd, hilarious, strange, and thoughtful. I wouldn’t be surprised by anyone who found this movie offputting, but it is so radically different from any other horror movie at the time or even now that it is worth watching. 

Cemetery Man is available to stream on The Criterion Channel, Prime Video, Kanopy, Tubi, Shudder, and Plutotv.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Fly (1986)

by A.J.

 

Night 9: Cronenberg Night 

“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

 

The Fly (1986) 

 

David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly is among the best horror movies of the 1980’s and one of the ultimate body horror movies. More impressively, it is regarded by many as one of the best remakes. The 1958 original is a classic, an excellent example of the sci-fi monster craze of the 1950’s. I think the most shocking thing about the original is that it is not campy or cheesy; instead, it plays like a dramatic tragedy. Cronenberg’s remake is effects heavy and certainly not for the squeamish, but it is such an affecting experience because the human drama matches the intensity of the visuals.

Jeff Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, a scientist who has created, in secret, a teleportation device. Geena Davis plays Ronnie, a journalist who is caught up in the excitement of new revolutionary new technology, a great story, and a handsome, geeky, but charming scientist. Of course, they fall in love, and things are going well until Brundle tests the teleportation on himself. The teleportation seems like a success at first, actually more than a success as he now feels supercharged, stronger, more energetic. He also heaps spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee without noticing. Eventually he learns that a fly was in the telepod with him and their DNA fused together, dooming him to a horrific transformation.

Cronenberg and the special effects and special makeup effects team, led by Chris Walas, do not hold back. An early failed experiment turns a baboon inside out. As Brundle’s human body decays, his skin becomes splotchy and his teeth and ears fall off. The fly creature (AKA Brundlefly) is monstrous and unsightly. There’s no denying the transformation and creature effects are very gross, but they are also very technically impressive. Walas would go on to win the Best Makeup Academy Award. 

As important as the effects are, they are still subservient to the story and the characters. Goldblum proved to be perfect casting for the requirements of the role and a good match for Cronenberg’s sensibilities. He is great at delivering Cronenberg’s dialogue and esoteric speeches about “the flesh.” He was also excited by the challenge of special effects makeup, prosthetics, and wearing a rubber suit. Geena Davis does a great job playing a normal person witnessing something extraordinary and overwhelming. Her concern and care for Brundle give the movie its emotional core. 

This version of The Fly hits so hard because of the combined effect of the horror imagery and the gut wrenching drama of the characters. Many viewers at the time and since have seen The Fly remake as an allegory for AIDS. Cronenberg was aware of these similarities but saw Brundle’s degeneration, decay, and desperate drastic attempt to stave off the inevitable as a metaphor for mortality and the aging process. Neither is a very pleasant thought, but it makes for the kind of horror film that lingers in the mind long after the credits rolled.  

 

The Fly (1986) is available to stream on Hulu and Peacock.  

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Wolf Man

by A.J.

 

Night 8: Werewolf Party Night! 

“Even a man who is pure in heart

And says his prayers by night

May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms

And the autumn moon is bright.”

 

The Wolf Man 

There’s no doubt that the Universal Pictures Wolf Man is one of the classic movie monsters. Lon Chaney, Jr. is as closely associated with the role as Boris Karloff is to Frankenstein’s Monster and Bela Lugosi is to Dracula. However, it is interesting to learn that The Wolf Man came rather late to the world of the Universal Monsters, being released in 1941, a full decade after Dracula and Frankenstein made their debut. It is also amazing that the simple title “The Wolf Man” had not been taken by another werewolf movie or book. Unlike Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man is not based on a classic novel. Even though the werewolf is part of the folklore of many cultures, there seems to be no major literary work about werewolves. So, Universal created not just a werewolf movie, but another monster-star that would spawn multiple sequels and become part of the iconography of classic horror movies.

Like many horror movies of this era, The Wolf Man is not very long. The runtime is only 70 minutes, but it does not feel rushed or truncated. Lon Chaney, Jr. stars as Larry Talbot, the son and heir of Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains), who has returned to Talbot Castle in rural Wales after 18 years away in America. Larry’s long absence serves three purposes: 1) it emphasizes the big rift with his father; 2) it makes him a stranger in own homeland; 3) it explains why he is American and his father is British. Larry goes on a date with Gwen (Evelyn Ankers), a local shopgirl, and her friend Jenny (Fay Helm), to a nearby fair to see a fortune teller, Bela, played by none other than Bela Lugosi. Not long after, Jenny is attacked and killed by a wolf. Larry kills the wolf with a silver handled cane, but not before he is bitten. The next day the police find the body of Bela the fortune teller, and Larry’s wound has vanished.

Unlike other movie monsters, Larry Talbot is as much a victim as he is a monster. His character arc is not turning from good to evil, hero to protagonist, or even struggling between opposing forces. Instead, he is mentally and emotionally struggling with a fate to which he is doomed. Chaney does a good job showing those internal struggles the more convinced he becomes that he is a werewolf. Claude Rains as Sir John is the sturdy voice of reason and modernity, offering psychological explanations. Rains previously starred in Universal’s 1933 film The Invisible Man and his presence, as well as Lugosi’s, seems to be the movie’s way of establishing some monster movie credibility.

The Wolf Man has a great gothic atmosphere especially in outdoor scenes in the woods filled with gnarled trees, mist, and heavy shadows. The rural village setting also helps establish this movie as taking place just outside of the modern explainable world. As the werewolf, Chaney stalks through the gloomy woods attacking whoever he finds, though he does not seem to bite anyone; he only wrestles and strangles his victims.

 

It’s never explained why Bela turned into a wolf and Larry turned into an actual wolfman. There is no mention of silver bullets, but silver is instrumental in killing a werewolf. There is also no mention of the full moon. According to the poem Maria Ouspenskaya as Bela’s mother recites, it is “when the wolfsbane blooms and autumn moon is bright” that a werewolf transforms. This rhyme that everyone in the village knows by heart was the creation of screenwriter Curt Siodmak, though the sequels changed “autumn moon” to “full moon.” It may only be a few lines, but it builds an entire local werewolf mythology.

The thing I found most surprising about The Wolf Man is that the transformation scene only shows Larry’s legs and feet becoming gradually hairier and clawlike with time lapse dissolves. The more famous time lapse dissolves of the Wolf Man’s face are from the sequels. Other night scenes simply cut to him already transformed. The Wolf Man design by makeup artist Jack Pierce is as iconic as the looks he created for the other Universal monsters. There’s no problem noticing the difference between the Wolf Man and any other werewolf. Both at the beginning and the end credits, Lon Chaney, Jr. is credited not as playing Larry Talbot, but as The Wolf Man. Universal sure knew how to create memorable monsters.  

 

The Wolf Man is available to stream on Peacock. It is also probably at your local library.  

13 Nights of Shocktober: Carrie (1976)

by A.J.

 

Night 8: Stephen King Night 

“Red. I might have known it would be red.”

 

Carrie (1976) 

The film adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie, was released in 1976 to critical and box office success kicking off 50 years of film and TV adaptations of the work of the master of horror. King is not shy about commenting on which adaptations he likes and which he does not. He famously hates The Shining because he felt Stanley Kubrick missed the point of the novel. Filmmakers who are also fans are aware of this and tend not to stray too far from King’s plots or themes. However, I think the best Stephen King adaptations have been done by filmmakers who put as much of themselves into the movie as King put into his novels and stories. Among these I would include: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, John Carpenter’s Christine, Mike Flannigan’s Doctor Sleep, and, the one that started it all, Brian De Palma’s Carrie.  

Whether writing a novel or short story, King excels at creating and fleshing out full characters, no matter how large or small a role they play. The characters in Carrie have an impressive cast to bring them to life on screen. Sissy Spacek gives a great performance as Carrie White, the skinny, shy, odd, cruelly bullied and teased high school girl who happens to have telekinesis. Carrie’s principle bully is Chris, played by Nancy Allen, who is planning a terrible prank to pull on Carrie at the prom. Chris’s boyfriend, Billy, is played by John Travolta, who is great at flashing charm one moment then turning into a jerk the next moment. Amy Irving plays Sue Snell, who was part of the group that teased and threw tampons at a frightened and crying Carrie, unaware she was getting her first period, at the start of the film. She creates a way to punish herself and make amends with Carrie: she will skip prom and have her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (William Katt), take Carrie instead. Betty Buckley plays the gym teacher who offers sympathy and kind words of encouragement to Carrie. By far the most memorable character, even more memorable than Carrie, is Carrie’s mother, Margaret White, played in a superb performance by Piper Laurie. Margaret White practices her own repressive brand of Christianity and in many ways is more harmful and abusive to Carrie than the school bullies. She believes that anything sexual or related to sex is a grave sin, so she never told Carrie about menstruation. In his rave review, Roger Ebert called Carrie a character study. He is right; the horror works so well and is so effective because it comes from the characters. 

De Palma’s filmography is brimming with references and homages–some subtle, some blatant–to his greatest influence, master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. Here, anytime Carrie uses her telekinetic powers, the score uses sharp, stabbing strings that sound very similar to the strings used in the Psycho shower scene. In terms of visuals, Carrie is a great example of De Palma’s style. He and cinematographer Mario Tosi make use of one of his favorite camera tools: the split diopter, a special lens split down the middle that allows for two different focal points in the same shot. So, in the scene where Carrie reacts to Tommy reading his poem in class both are shown in focus in the same shot even though Carrie is in the back of the class. It is not offputting but the eye knows it is an unnatural point of view. When Carrie and Tommy have a wonderful dance the camera spins around them, caught up in the joy and romance of the moment, but the spinning goes faster and faster until the image is dizzying; it's a clue about the chaos to come. The climactic disaster at the prom is a great example of a director showing chaos without disorienting the audience. To show just how much is happening all at the same time, De Palma uses another favorite technique: split screen. A kaleidoscope effect to put us in Carrie's mental state. Images swirl and we hear tauntings from her mother, the bullies, and even Miss Collins’s words of encouragement that now seem like taunts. The prom massacre is a great horror show but there is no joy or excitement in Carrie’s revenge. Her rage is the result of a complete breakdown, lashing out indiscriminately (unlike in the 2013 remake where she targets her bullies), and we realize that we have been watching a tragedy unfold.

Aside from some minor changes by screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen, this might be the closest film adaptation of any King novel. Little is lost in terms of set pieces and scenes but more importantly little is lost in terms of characters and themes. Carrie still resonates because no matter the era or technology involved, the essence of these characters, the way they act, the things they are capable of (telekinesis aside) are recognizable and relatable. 

 

Carrie is available to stream on HBOmax and Prime Video. It is also probably at your local library.