CineBad!!!

What can I say? I thought the slasher type horror film genre was dead! It’s not, it’s just mutated a little bit. In this film, there was only one gory death scene, and it occurs near the end. It’s worthy of your worst Friday the 13th annoying anxiety dream, though (I won’t say nightmare, because it’s really not that scary). Anyway, this is the story of Carrie’s (you saw that film, right?) half-sister, Rachel (Bergl.) Her mother is in a loony bin, and she’s being raised by a mean foster family who is only in it for the money they get for her upkeep. Rachel is your typical angst-ridden outcast teenager with one exception- she’s telekinetic. That is, she can cause harpoons to fly through glass doors and emasculate boorish high school jocks without even lifting a finger- the stuff most teens just dream about!

Amy Irving returns in this film as Sue Snell, Carrie’s high school peer, all grown up and a guidance counselor now. As Rachel’s counselor, she wants to help her by sending her to a place where she can learn to use her powers for good instead of evil (i.e. trashing her high school prom, which at my high school would have been a public service venture!) She also presents the opportunity to see many flashbacks of the original Carrie movie. She explains it all to Rachel as they visit the ruins of the former Carrie-Ravaged high school. It’s been 23 years since the fateful Carrie I event…you’d think they would have cleaned up the charred mess by now. You’d think.

Meanwhile, Rachel and a high school jock fall in love. It looks like there might be a happy ending after all… but no, this is a “horror” film, so we have to have the Big Chopping Scene in the end where the mean stuck up high school kids spend a great deal of effort to humiliate her, and then everyone dies. Alas, just when we thought perhaps the ending will be happy–maybe the misfortune that plagued Carrie will skip over Rachel! No, that wouldn’t fit the formula. Instead, Rachel wigs out, causing her tattoo of a rose to grow a thorny vine all around her body, in a bizarre cheese-laden symbolic manner. The very end confused me. Is it supposed to be a good thing that Rachel’s ghost is hanging around the former high school jock’s college dorm? Or are we just getting ready for Carrie III: Beyond the Grave?