POP! Movies – Carrie

I seem to have been on a bit of a Stephen King kick of late. I reviewed the new version of IT just a few days ago, today we look at the POP version of Carrie and even as I type I’m watching the first episode of Stephen King’s The Mist.

Based on Stephen King’s first (published) novel, Carrie is the incredibly depressing story of a teenage girl who develops psychic powers. It was adapted into a film pretty quickly after release, with Sissy Spacek cast in the titular role. 

Both the book and movie of Carrie certainly contain their fair share of supernatural scares, and there are a lot of themes you can draw from it – high school as the real horror, bullying, victim blaming and sexual awakening just some of them. It’s not hard to see why the popularity of both continues after so many decades, even if they show signs of age*.  

But for me, most of the terror lies in Carrie’s religiously abusive mother. We don’t really find out which brand of Christianity Carrie’s mum adheres to, but it looks to be some kind of strange variant of Catholicism (we see Carrie praying in front of a statue of Saint Sebastian at one point). But in terms of practical application, her mother’s rantings and ravings come across as some kind of fundamentalist Protestant strain – ill-informed and deeply suspicious about the world. 

I’ve never experienced anything as extreme as Carrie, but as a kid I attended a Christian school that fell under the sway of a Charismatic movement known as the Toronto Blessing – lots of speaking in tongues, people collapsing around the place, that kind of thing. From my perspective, the principal used it as a way to consolidate his particular ugly brand of authoritarian leadership, by trying to fill student and teacher minds with bullshit. Maybe some of them even believed it at the time, I don’t know. It’s affected me more as an adult than I think it did as a kid, causing me considerable anxiety and leaving me highly skeptical of the whole phenomenon. 

Now to be fair, I haven’t been to the church in Toronto that originated the whole thing, so I can’t speak for their experiences. But based on my own, I’m inclined to think the whole thing was a hoax, or some kind of hysteria. I certainly don’t think it was a good thing – it’s been a blight on the modern church since. So yeah, the scenes with Carrie’s mum pushed some buttons for me.

But I have digressed heavily. The POP itself is quite simple, showing Carrie at her prom, post-pig’s blood. She’s wearing a slip-style dress, and still has her corsage on. My only real complaint is that could actually be way, way bloodier to better match the art on the back of the box, and the film itself.

If you’re a fan of the movie, this is a no-brainer. It’s one of Stephen King’s better adaptations, and though it’s showing its age, hugely influential on horror films ever since followed. Not Funko’s finest work, but definitely a solid piece for the shelf.

*I’m yet to see the remake from a few years ago