Carrie is a supernatural horror film produced in 1976, this film was directed by Brian De Palma, a famous American film director and screenwriter. The film Carrie was adapted from Stephen King's same name novel, Carrie as well which was published in 1974. A few awards and several nominations were given to Carrie due to the interesting storyline, the actress Sissy Spacek (known as Carrie White) even got the best actress for her outstanding acting skills. The idea of femininity was covered in most of the part in this film.
The synopsis of this film was like a high school girl, Carrie seemed to be weak and always get taunted or even bullied by her high school mates. She has an extremely religious mother who thought that everything Carrie had done is wrong or sinful, even when she just experienced her first menstruation, she is nervous hoping to get comfort by her mother but her mother does not think so, she thinks that this is a symbol of sinful. However, Carrie has telekinesis, a strange power to control and make the object to move. Until someday when Carrie's high school have the prom, only this is the time when Carrie managed to show her symptom of telekinesis.
The opening scene starts with a long shot showing a group of girls playing volleyball together. Mise-en-scène exists when the assumptions and combinations of the same coloured costumes and the characters appeared in the same frame. The camera angle slowly changed from long shot to medium shot of the girl, Carrie White to let the audience know that this is the main character if the film. Camera angle remains at Carrie showing that she could not manage to catch the ball that was passed to her. From this point can understand that she is not only the main character, it also successfully portrayed Carrie as a weak character compared to others. Her blurry face and the messy appearance, when everyone tucked in their shirts but she didn't, makes her looks shabby compared to others. She stands at the back caused her seems to be left-out among the group of girls, this might be she isolated herself or the girls isolated her to be with them. When Carrie missed the ball, it even highlighted the weakness of this girl. Especially when she missed out the ball, the school bell rang and everyone is going back to class, the girls taunted her, hither and blamed her, showing that she only able to keep quiet and get bullied because she is too weak to mess up with the girls.
The scene then leads to the locker room and the camera angle moved from left to right showing that the girls are chatting happily, changing their clothes or doing their things, seems to be peeping behind the locker stalking at the girls but Carrie couldn't be found among the girls. The colours of the locker room scene used were blue and yellow. The main colour is blue which represents cool, just like Carrie's world, cool blue because of her religious yet abusive mum who abused her for years. Inferiority complex gained in Carrie's mind, she is inferior and shy so she seldom talks with others so she has no friends, everyone in school thinks that Carrie is a freak and bully her as well. Carrie is more inferior because she has no one willing to help her and listen to her, not only her schoolmates, even her mother who has blood relation with her also does not willing to listen to her but hurt her most of the time. This has caused people barely able to step into her cool blue world. As the blue colour is quite dull, light colours were added to brighten up the scene, from their sports uniform which is yellow color, to the locker scene, when all the girls were in the locker room, many of them are naked or having clothes on but their skin was revealed, skin colour has the same colour range with yellow colour as well. Also, there are many white colours appeared during the scene because their towels are white in colour and white can represent the purity of these teenage girls. These light colours are very attractive among the dull blue colour scene which can grab the attention of the audiences. If there is no bright colour mix in the dull blue scene, it would be very boring to the audiences when everything seems to be the same, that is why yellow is added to become catchy. The background music during the locker scene part which is slow and lite and the shots showing the situation of the girls in the locker room makes the speed of the entire movie dragged when there is no point of spending so much time showing the girls.
The camera angle then slowly move towards a girl who is showering and stop right there with blurry sight, mentioning the girl who is bathing is Carrie. Although the scene wanted to tell that Carrie starts to have her first menstrual period, but the speed of her showering action was slowed down, and there are close-up shots of her face, stomach and legs. Extreme close-up used on the shower head as clean water came from the shower head because Carrie wanted to clean herself from the harm towards her causing by her schoolmates and even her mum (Georgia, 2011). Shots showing her cleansing herself with water, symbolize her trying to wash her sins away. Close-up shots from her body parts This is quite seducing shooting way to attract the attention of the audience, making the audience curious and wanted to know what will happen next. When audiences are still falling into the curves of this female character, De Palma came out with bait-and-switch technique (Muir, 2009) baiting audience to focus looking at the body of the female character through male gaze method letting them have imagination of better scenes coming on but suddenly changed to entire storyline of audiences would not think of, which is Carrie, the female character got her very first menstrual period. For the showering scene, the red colour is the colour for the scene as Carrie is having a menstrual period. The red colour is the symbolism of this film, the period blood red colour not only showing that Carrie has turned into an adult, but it also gives a meaning showing that the demons in Carrie's body are ready to come out anytime because demons are in red colour too.
The romantic music is continued from the locker scene when Carrie's hand touches her own blood, the music stops and the diegetic sound of the water came out at the same time. This is the turning point of Carrie when she found blood coming out from her body, without having any knowledge about menstrual period because her mum does not educate her about the reason of having period, she only been told that having period is a sin. However, blood is seen to be having a huge power in religious circumstances, there is also a meaning of once an individual has connected, consumed or touched the liquid would immediately get affected by the blood because deliberate spilling blood is a sacrilegious action (Fransson, 2015).
Next scene is a famous scene which also serves as the climax of this film. Mise-en-scène for the prom scene are the high angle shots to show the pig blood bucket aiming on Carrie and extremely slow motion shots showing the process of the pig blood bucket falling on Carrie, giving audiences have the chance to think about how happy is Carrie when she was announced as the prom queen and how embarrassed is she when the bucket fell on her. The colours used in most of the part in this film were red and blue as mentioned, in this scene, red and blue together can be linked as the relationship between Carrie and her mother. The two primary colours used together linked to a meaning of tension between the extremely religious mother whilst restrained Carrie's sexuality (Pheasant-Kelly, 2013). Carrie wore a white dress to the prom which supposed to symbolize her purity but when the pig blood splashed on her, her whole body became red colour, this is when the anger in her body gained that causing her telekinesis power gained at the same time. the colours used were mostly red and blue. Although red is a warm colour, at the same time it also seems to be danger and fear. Just like Carrie, no one knows that she has a hidden power in herself, De Palma highlighted the metamorphosis of the character, Carrie through the colours. This is to let the audience to have a clue that the reality of the character has not to appear yet, but it is dangerous once the character breaks out and transformed to another person once her hidden power has been forcing out.
When Carrie collapse and looking her hands full of blood, as her mother told her that blood to represent sins when she got her very first menstrual period, her face reaction slowly turned big, she seems to be yelling because of her mouth opening, helpless and anxious covered her whole face. There is no diegetic sound but only bucket swinging and blood dripping sound effect, even the yelling of her or the crowd laughing were muted as well. This is like Carrie's mind when the pig blood poured on her, she stunned and don't know what to do, she couldn't hear any sound from her surroundings. However, at the same time, this can be related as "Silence before the storm", just like her telekinetic is ready to explode soon. The sound effects of this scene are quite matching because when the camera angles changed, for example when the music flow changes up and down according to the scene as well. The speed of the music became faster and faster when Chris is going to pull the rope of the pig blood bucket. This is good because the flows able to make audiences to feel something big is happening real soon at the same time also feel curious about what is going to happen next.
Close-up shots were applied in focusing on Carrie's facial expression, her bulging eyes brought out her intense emotion. After Tommy got hit by the pail, Carrie raised her hand up helplessly and what she can see at that moment was everyone laughing at her treating her as a joke, with the flashback voices of those who had bullied her previously came out at the same time, though it is not the reality because her anger has made her mind gone insane, all the scenes she thinks about was just her imagination, she even thinks about Ms Collin her favourite teacher who helped her gone through ups and downs was laughing at her as well. Split scene into left and right frame which either one side will focus of Carrie's facial expressions while she is releasing her telekinesis power, and the other split frame showing the effect caused by her power, many of them fell or were caught in the fire. Also, the camera focused on the headlight and Carrie immediately shut down the blue lights by leaving only red lights on. The scene became a red colour that enveloped the entire hall, in line with Carrie's mood which is full of anger and violence (Muir, 2009). When showing Carrie, the camera angle is static, whilst the people in the hall are shouting and trying to run away from death, made a contrast between Carrie and those people, this can be understood as Carrie is under control by her psychic power by causing her not afraid of dying (foralmodovar, 2016).
De Palma did a great job by producing such a horror yet interesting film. He shows many different circumstances in this film, not only the psychic power of the main character, but the very religious mother abusing her child and bullying among peers in school problem, even until this era there are still many cases reported on school bullying. This is a serious problem to be taken seriously because no one has the psychic power like Carrie. Besides that, this film presented a few unique techniques created by De Palma which makes the film very addictive to watch.