I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with movie trailers. On the one hand, they can be exciting, short-film quality creations, enticing me to see a picture by way of mood and tone as opposed to explicit narrative detail. On the other, they can be vapid, two-minute rundowns of every important story beat that any given movie has to offer, sapping the thing of any interesting surprises.
Still, for better or for worse, when I was younger trailers were almost always how I got my first glimpse of a film and what it had to offer. And, for me, that initial glimpse typically came in the form of less than a minute long TV spots that would play during prime-time TV commercial breaks.
In the case of The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), my first impression came in the form of that kid Brad from Home Improvement being an asshole and seemingly getting murdered as a result. As a casual viewer of the Tim Allen-led TV show, seeing Zachery Ty Bryan in what looked like a teen slasher movie was not enough to sell me, but given my experience with the other teen slashers in the cycle at the time, I figured my friends and I might have a good time with it regardless.
By the time it was released we had seen multiple movie trailers, all promising Hell on Earth brought on by the wrath of someone we presumed to be named Carrie. As a horror novice at the time, I was familiar with the original in name and generalities only. I had never seen Brian DePalma’s 1976 classic and certainly didn’t know the plot. All I knew was that Carrie ended up covered in blood at the prom and, I was pretty sure, lit a whole bunch of kids on fire with her mind in retaliation.
The Rage: Carrie 2 was… not as advertised. Less fun slasher, more dramatic look at high school life through the lens of an introverted girl, viewed by her peers as odd and therefore threatening as a result. The film was somber, downright experimental at times (black and white cutaways in a teenage horror film in 1999?!) and took its time to build toward the sort of chaos the trailer promised would be the norm the whole way through.
As it was with most films at the time that I didn’t immediately connect with, I walked away from the experience thinking little of the movie and moved on to the next. And, as has happened before, years later, upon finding my way back to horror and rediscovering the movies of my youth, I returned to The Rage.
What I discovered was that my expectations had been improperly managed. They had doomed my experience with the film long before I ever sat down to watch it. Indeed, I found that a 30 second TV spot shoehorned into an Ally McBeal commercial break was probably not the best way to represent a feature-length film.
Seeing it detached from expectation, I realized that what I once had thought of as a failed attempt at a 90’s slasher was actually a deeply personal examination of patriarchal entitlement. It takes a hard look at the privileged male psyche and the unique brand of toxic masculinity present in teen pictures that always seems to plague the young women in their runtimes. Moreover, it’s a dissection of the male-driven mentality that simultaneously victimizes and vilifies women in the stead of furthering the male gaze’s own selfish, sexual and more carnal desires.
Using the framework of its predecessor, The Rage: Carrie 2 transplants the original film’s concept into modern times with relevance and urgency. It feels years ahead of its time and certainly flew well over my friends and I’s heads when we originally saw it. Katt Shea directs with a steady hand, utilizing subtlety and thought-provoking technique (i.e. black and white photography to represent Rachel’s internal struggle) to craft a slow-burning, mounting dread which pays huge dividends in the final act.
While the film did not deliver on the explosive thrill ride it’s commercials might’ve promised, the film does amount to something bombastic and over-the-top, befitting the careful pace it took to arrive at such a conclusion. And, in my eyes, it’s the scene at the party, where Rachel loses her composure and gives in to the emotion she’s been forced to bottle up her entire life, which serves as the standout moment in the film.
From the thoughtful and explicit direction on the page to the no-holds-barred action onscreen, the sequence offers intense, thrilling practical effects that also serve the deeper message of the narrative. Anger, pain, and resentment are powerful emotions, often cultivated over time by those who think of themselves as higher, mightier and more deserving than those they lord over. The Rage: Carrie 2, particularly the climactic scene at the big party, imparts the dangers of proliferating such patriarchal aims, both figuratively and literally.
I’d like to see a trailer try to show that.
THE SCENE
Rachel’s at the party. Everyone is laughing and throwing her around. Her tattoo starts to expand, the barbs around the image of the heart wrapping vein-like around her body. The windows explode. People are decapitated and bloodied. Sue arrives and attempts to get into the house. A fireplace poker lifts into the air and flies through a boy’s head, moving through the door and kills Sue. Mark and Eric realize Rachel is the cause of the mayhem and they try to escape. A fire erupts, burning people alive as they attempt to flee. The gates to the house slam shut. Mark and Eric raid the gun cabinet. They grab a spear and flare gun. Rachel stands before the flames motionless as her mother watches on helplessly. She confronts Mark, Eric, and Monica. Monica’s glasses explode inwards, decimating her eyes and she slips, firing the speargun into Eric’s crotch. Distracted by her mother, Rachel turns just as Mark fires a flare gun at her stomach, halting her destruction. She falls into the pool, taking Mark with her and he drowns under the cover which Rachel closes with her telekinetic powers.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
Both the script and the film begin with the imposing teenagers pushing Rachel around and jeering at her. The primary difference is that, as scripted, Jesse is present whereas in the film he has not yet arrived at the party. The omission changes things for Rachel, removing any doubt that she might be fooled into believing his participation and sanctioning of his friend’s cruelty.
The script is broken up into emboldened character names and choppy Action Description, building to, RACHEL’S P.O.V. — spinning around. A NIGHTMARISH GALLERY of dancing, jostling torsos, TWISTED FACES and LAUGHING MOUTHS, smirking and pointing at her.
The script follows this with the emboldened header: INTERCUT WITH: FAST CLOSE-UPS.
In the film, this chaos is realized with tight close-ups, constantly shifting and occasionally manifesting in a trippy, slow-motion frame rate. Laughing, distorted faces swim by and the line from the original Carrie (1976), “They’re all gonna laugh at you!” floats through the soundscape. The image further warps, people’s faces becoming elongated, monstrous things that appear less human and more demonic. Rachel falls to the floor, hollow and decimated. Then, Rachel’s eye appears in a close-up, now in black and white as a voice off-screen cackles, “Sucker!”
Noting that tears are streaming down Rachel’s face for the first time since she was four years old, the script offers brief snippets of emotional insight, impossible to display organically on the screen. It moves directly to Brad noticing, The THORN VINE around the HEART TATTOO getting bigger and edging up her arm. The film tracks with this, with one addition. Before her tattoo expands, the image cuts from her black and white eye to a wide shot of the glass doors lining the exterior of the house as they all slam shut.
The image cuts to a close up of the heart physically beating as the vines grow, snaking like a tendril up her arm. The film brings the vines to life with CGI, but subtly so, juxtaposing the expanding ink against trembling walls and the anxious crowd. The screenplay holds on Rachel, but the film shifts to falling chandeliers and dislodged paintings crashing to the floor. By beginning at the macro scale, the film allows Rachel’s steadying focus of revenge to build to a more impactful climax.
In the screenplay, after the vine settles on her cheek. Rachel faces Jesse, his arms out to her in his embrace and instead responds with a KNIFE embedded in his open palm, nailing him to the wall. She follows that with a corkscrew in his other hand which spins around, burrowing into his flesh. Then, with everyone watching her in silence and fear:
Rachel straightens up and…
The kitchen door CLOSES…
The glass doors to the back yard slide SHUT…
The front door SLAMS.
The build-up is not so slow-burning in the film, as once the slithering veins of thorn finish wrapping themselves around Rachel’s body, they come to rest in her fingertips. With her hands outstretched, her power now in her own, pained control, the large, glass doors burst inward, showering the screaming crowd with a barrage of glass. The image cuts to a close-up of a severed head bouncing by and then to a teenage boy fitted with a blood-squirting neck-wound. This display of horror is followed by a screaming girl being showered with blood, presumably from the same neck, the thick, red liquid invading her eyes and open mouth, feeling like something out of The Evil Dead (1981).
The gore is so foreign and outlandish given the previous, more subdued set up of the film, that its impact is amplified tenfold. The screenplay too calls for the windows to burst (after they RATTLE, then CRACK in a spider-web pattern), instigating a similar level of violence.
FROM ABOVE — The outer edge of the CROWD are mowed down as if by a machine gun and…
A WHIP PAN — Finds a BOY impaled by a large, jagged shard.
It even makes note that CHUCK’s decapitated head rolls across the floor and of one boy’s carotid artery spewing blood like a lawn sprinkler. The gore effects are mostly practically realized, flying at the frame so fast and in such quick succession that the work feels more akin to a tapestry of explosive anger and bloodshed as opposed to individual set pieces.
In the film, a high angle, canted frame ushers in Sue as she arrives at the house with Barbara (Rachel’s mother). Her attempt to get in is intercut with Brad’s move to escape, as he steps over bodies as their mouths ooze blood. Rachel, again in black in white, watches coldly. A fireplace poker rises and flies forward (digitally realized), impaling Brad’s head through the peephole that Sue is on the opposite side of. The poker slams through Sue’s head as well, their bodies now hanging parallel on either side of the door. All of this is shown in close-ups, putting the grotesque results on full display.
On the page, An IRON FIREPLACE POKER lifts up on one end, then flies like a javelin towards BRAD’S back. However, here Sue emerges unharmed and is able to open the door. The scene continues as it does on the screen except with Sue alive and in the house as MUSIC CDs fly off a shelf and Spin through the air at high velocity. As on the page, the CDs slice into a girl, embedding themselves in her stomach and slicing her throat, continuing down the path of outrageous, gory eccentricity.
The script and screen continue to progress in the same way, following Mark and Eric as they smash their way through the CHAOS, realizing Rachel’s powers and then climbing over bodies in an attempt to evacuate. This action continues to be intercut with shots of Rachel in black and white when her powers are directly being activated and stylized color when not in use. The vibrancy on display throughout much of this scene is in direct contrast to the somewhat drab color pallet that the movie had previously employed. The reds, purples, and oranges of the fire and flashing lights bouncing against her red dress signifies an internal energy that complements and emboldens Rachel’s raw power, now on full display.
Small differences occur here and there, like a FLAMING LOG being the cause of the fire versus a fireplace poker, but generally the sequence holds true to the page throughout. Sue’s extended presence is also shortly snuffed out when, after being drenched in alcohol from the exploding bottles on the bar, she catches ablaze and rolls on the floor to put out the flames to no avail.
The film delivers more images of fleeing teenagers, several on fire, as they make their way to the front gates. Eventually, the exterior shots grow wider and wider until the image rests on several teenagers drinking at the car some distance away. One eyes the towering flames and mutters, “Man, we’re missing one killer party”, offering the only bit of levity this sequence affords.
In the script, Mark and Eric head into the Den and smash a standing glass case containing pistols and rifles. They grab the weapons and flee. In the film, the cabinet contains spearguns and flares, more in line with a fisherman’s tastes than that of a game hunter. While this change was more than likely due to the rising climate of gun violence in schools at the time, it also makes for a more interesting turn and presents something out of the ordinary compared to what’s expected.
Again, the image cuts between black and white imagery of Rachel as she approaches her three remaining tormentors. The script mentions nothing about the color pallet or cinematography, so the black and white motif that runs through the film, culminating here with the attack, stands as a clear and effective directorial choice. While those feeling her wrath see something effervescent, Rachel lit by the dancing flames in her red dress, the viewer sees cold, hard resolve. Every time the image cuts back to her eyes in black and white, the confidence that she had been lacking throughout the film’s runtime emerges, standing firm.
The script and the film push forward beat for beat, Eric, Mark, and Tracy (transposed to Monica in the film) run, breaking through the glass doors and taking their stand against the backdrop of the exterior pool. Rachel can be seen approaching in the background. She moves slow, eliciting the feeling of an unstoppable, murderous force not dissimilar to someone like Halloween’s (1978) Michael Myers. The shot progression continues in a shot-reverse-shot pattern comprised of extreme canted angles and ever-tightening, alienating frames. Tracy moves first, as scripted, as she tightens her finger on the trigger.
RACHEL’s eyes narrow and…
TRACY’s glasses shatter into her eyes, spewing blood [and] milky fluid.
Onscreen, the shot almost makes it appear as though Monica’s eyes are exploding outward, causing her glasses to shatter. The effect is clearly done digitally, but the shot is so quick that it’s hardly distracting. Immediately after, the image cuts to a close up of Monica’s torn, bloody eyes behind her broken glasses, blood running down her face as she brings herself to scream. As she does in the script, Monica staggers and fires her shotgun into Eric’s groin. Of course, in the film it’s not a shotgun but a speargun she’s holding.
The effect on the page is, A dying ERIC stares at his shredded lap, then falls over. Onscreen, the visual is more grotesque and outlandish in some ways, yet accomplishes the same end. The speargun fires into his crotch in a close-up, taking a large chunky bit of flesh and sinew with it out the other side. The spear carries Eric’s manhood lands in the pool and sinks slowly, as Eric falls to his knees moaning. Both he and Tracy go limp as Mark stares at Rachel. The two face off in a wide shot, Rachel now the dominant force in the equation, a stark, emasculating contrast for Mark.
In the script, Rachel uses her powers to disarm him and then sets a coiled GARDEN HOSE on him, the thing slithering through the grass to wrap around MARK’s ankle and twist around his legs and up his waist like a python. The hose almost does him in, were it not for the handgun in his waistband which he wrangles free and uses on Rachel. Then, holding her belly, gutshot, Rachel staggers and falls into the pool, disappearing amid a swirl of blood.
The film excises the garden hose turned snake, instead offering a distraction by way of Rachel’s mother, who calls to her off-screen and reignites a shred of Rachel’s humanity. Temporarily distracted, she offers Mark enough time to grab the discarded flare gun and fire at her. The flare hits her side, just as the bullets were scripted to and the camera pans up her body, landing on her face which is turned toward the sky as the flame burning into her side illuminates her skin.
The scene and the film end on the same note with Mark approaching the pool with his gun to finish Rachel off. Then:
RACHEL’S BLOODY ARM
bursts from the water and grips his neck.
In a medium close-up, Rachel bursts from the water. She appears monstrous, her mouth gapes and her eyes are wide, again drawing visual comparisons to something like the woman bursting forth from the Earth in The Evil Dead poster. The pool cover begins to close and the speargun sinks. In the film, the cover smacks the back of Mark’s head. Disoriented, he becomes trapped under the cover. As scripted, He desperately pushes at it, eyes bulging, lungs burning, as his feet kick to keep him afloat.
Deviating from Mark’s last attempt to take Rachel down with him on the page, onscreen Rachel grabs the speargun and cuts her way out of the pool. Mark is shown in slow-motion, blood seeping from his mouth as his eyes settle widely and his body goes limp. Rachel, on the other hand, emerges of her own will and ingenuity, having survived her tormentors and unleashing the power, strength, and confidence that was inside of her all along.
Still, having been brought about by repression, abuse, and pyscho-sexual social torment, the result arrives tainted with blood, violence, and hate. Indeed, there are consequences to the entitled patriarchal system young women are subjected to, some more extreme than others, a reflection of the severity of one’s crimes and, of course, the depths to which those being victimized are pushed.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“In horror movies particularly you can experiment and really kind of push the envelope,” director Katt Shea said in her commentary track found on the Scream Factory Blu-ray release of The Rage: Carrie 2, “it’s a genre where the director can use all of the photographic techniques and all of the opportunities to tell the story and that’s exciting and fun.”
The Rage was a movie commenting on the genre, its many tropes, and the real-world implications of the dangers and temptations youth face in everyday society. It tackles peer pressure, sex-based toxicity, bullying, classism and more as it treads quietly toward an explosive conclusion that delivers a level of horror so extreme that it feels like it belongs in a different film. It’s the sort of movie interested in creating a dialogue, pushing its audience to dissect what it’s seeing on a different level than the normal, somewhat flippant slasher cycle that the film found itself in and was often disregarded as a result.
Looking back, the film stands as an impressive, forward-thinking entry into the genre. However, nowhere in its runtime is its level of craft and execution more clearly exemplified than the party sequence. Starting from a clear, straight-forward vision on the pages of Rafael Moreu’s script and culminating with Katt Shae’s own assured realization on the screen, every decision was thought out carefully to create the ideal climax.
Beginning with Rachel’s torment, Katt Shea opted to take a different approach to the visual style. In her commentary, she said, “I just tried this thing shooting 6 frames per second on the guys when they’re tormenting her and I just tried speeding it back up and it was so effective”. She also spoke about the multi-week, long and drawn-out process of shooting the scene and the strain it put on the actors, particularly Emily Bergl who played Rachel.
“Emily really went through a lot being pushed around… I didn’t do it for exploitative purposes or titillation at all, I mean I just really did it because I thought that it was the most effective way to totally humiliate her and to just show their brutality.”
The scene is comprised of a combination of practical and digital effects, the marriage of which amounts to some incredibly impressive moments. Between Kleiser-Walczak and Stuart Robertson, the computer-generated effects spanned everything from Rachel’s growing tattoo to Tracy’s exploding eyes. Still, digital effects are often not the only component to a properly realized effect.
“That’s a prosthetic under [Tracy’s] glasses and she had to walk out onto the set with these fake eyes on with the set on fire and she was just terrified, and she just came through like a trooper,” director Katt Shea recalled in her commentary regarding actress Rachel Blanchard.
Katt Shea also discusses how they built the set from the ground up in a parking garage and then “just burned the crap out of [it]”. Real fire was employed as well as dozens of extras and stunt workers who were shown being burned alive, decapitated or bloodied by the debris and unruly crowd. Katt Shea said it best in the commentary, “oh yah, we went for it.”
I may not have appreciated The Rage: Carrie 2 upon its original release. Maybe it’s because of the trailer. Maybe it’s because of my lackadaisical attitude toward horror. Or maybe it just went over my head. It all amounts to expectations. People have a certain expectation when they sit down to watch a movie, a sequel to a seminal horror classic and, whether it’s the movie’s fault or not, those expectations often determine the experience.
The Rage: Carrie 2 does the daring thing and defies those expectations. It is neither a retread or Carrie nor a carbon-copy of the slasher flicks it was lumped in with, it was something new. Something daring. A stirring vision that took its time and paid off in a big, bloody way.
These days I tend to avoid trailers. I’d much rather my first impression be at the hands of a poster or a still, maybe even a one-sentence log-line. I find it’s better to let my expectations be less tethered to a handful of iconic moments and more to the general theme and tone of what the project is supposed to be.
After all, Carrie 2 is a lot more than Zachery Ty Bryan losing his package at the sharp end of a speargun, no matter what the TV spot tells you.
The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) Written by Rafael More & Directed by Katt Shae
