Carrie 2

''The Rage: Carrie 2'' is a 1999 American supernatural horror film directed by Katt Shea, and starring Emily Bergl in her film debut, Jason London, Dylan Bruno, J. Smith-Cameron and Amy Irving. The film is a sequel to the 1976 film '' Carrie'' based on the 1974 novel by Stephen King, and serves as the second film in the ''Carrie'' franchise. The film was originally titled ''The Curse'' and did not have connections to the ''Carrie'' novel or film, but was eventually rewritten to be a direct sequel to the 1976 film. Its plot follows Rachel Lang (Bergl) the younger half-sister of Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), also suffering with telekinesis, who finds that her best friend Lisa Parker's (Mena Suvari) suicide was spurred by a group of popular male classmates (Bruno, Zachery Ty Bryan, Elijah Craig) who exploited her for sexual gain.

''The Rage: Carrie 2'' was released on March 12, 1999, and was a box office bomb, grossing $17 million against a $21 million production budget. It received generally negative reviews, which criticized the routine recycling of the original film's story and themes. However, they widely praised the performance of Bergl, who was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor for her work on the film at the 26th Saturn Awards.

Plot

In 1989, Barbara Lang claims her daughter Rachel is possessed, having seen her display of telekinesis. Barbara is diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized, while six-year-old Rachel is placed in foster care.

Ten years later, Rachel, now an outcast high school student, is living with unsympathetic foster parents Boyd and Emilyn. Her best, and only friend Lisa Parker commits suicide by leaping from the school's roof after popular football star Eric Stark dumped her, having exploited her for sex.

While developing Lisa's film, Rachel finds a photograph of her and Eric together. She turns the photo in to the police, explaining Lisa confessed to her that she had recently lost her virginity. Sheriff Kelton and the school's guidance counselor, Sue Snell, pursue statutory rape charges against Eric, who is 18 while Lisa is 16.

Eric and many of his teammates, including Mark Bing and Chuck Potter, are competing to see who can seduce the most girls. Rachel's Basset Hound, Walter, is hit by a car and she flags down a driver, who is Jesse Ryan, another player on the team. Jesse takes an interest in Rachel, to the chagrin of cheerleader Tracy Campbell, who is pursuing him. Meanwhile, having discovered that Rachel implicated them in Lisa's death, Eric and Mark attempt to scare her into silence by harassing her at her home, but her telekinetic powers frighten them away. Pressured by the players' families, the district attorney covers up the statutory rape charges against Eric.

Sue begins to suspect Rachel may possess telekinetic powers through their counseling sessions. She tracks down Barbara, whose schizophrenia has stabilized, and learns that Rachel's father was Ralph White, who was also the father of Carrie White. Sue brings Rachel to the ruins of the high school which Carrie destroyed in a telekinetic rage in 1976 after being humiliated at her senior prom. Sue, a peer of Carrie's, is the only survivor of the incident. When Sue discloses that Carrie is Rachel's half-sister, Rachel dismisses her as a liar. Sue later sneaks Barbara out of the institution so that she can inform Rachel of her father's identity.

As revenge, Mark sets up and covertly films a romantic date between Rachel and Jesse. He throws a big party at his family's mansion. Monica Jones, a girl in the clique, befriends Rachel and invites her to their party. Rachel leaves with Monica to the party, while Tracy takes Jesse, having arranged for his car to be sabotaged. Tracy attempts to seduce Jesse but he rejects her.

At the party, Mark and Chuck cruelly humiliate Rachel by projecting the footage of her and Jesse having sex for all the partygoers to see, and saying she is just a name in Jesse's "list of conquests." This triggers Rachel's telekinesis, and she seals the mansion closed. She causes a large window to explode, killing and maiming Chuck and most of the partygoers, and triggers a fire. Sue and Barbara arrive at the party, but a fire-poker impales the front door, which kills football player Brad Winters and Sue.

Monica, Eric, and Mark frantically arm themselves as Rachel pursues them. Rachel makes Monica's glasses implode into her eyes, killing her and causing her to inadvertently castrate Eric with a harpoon, killing him as well. Mark shoots Rachel with a flare gun and she falls into the swimming pool. When Mark approaches the pool, Rachel pulls him in, triggers the sensor to the automatic pool cover, and leaves him to drown.

Barbara accuses Rachel of being possessed and flees. Jesse and Tracy arrive at the party. Rachel kills Tracy by causing a piece of ceiling to collapse on her. On a balcony, Rachel confronts Jesse about his list, but he denies it. Rachel then notices that the videotape of her and Jesse, still playing in the living room, captured Jesse saying "I love you" while she slept. As Rachel realizes Jesse's genuine feelings for her, an awning collapses on her. She throws Jesse off the balcony onto the pool as she burns to death.

One year later, Jesse, now a student at King's University, cares for Walter. He has a nightmare of kissing Rachel before she shatters into pieces.

Cast

* Emily Bergl as Rachel Lang
** Kayla Campbell as Young Rachel
* Jason London as Jesse Ryan: a popular jock with whom Rachel falls in love.
* Dylan Bruno as Mark Bing: a football player who owns the mansion where the football game after-party takes place.
* J. Smith-Cameron as Barbara Lang: Rachel's biological mother.
* Amy Irving as Sue Snell: the sole survivor of Carrie's rage in the original film, now a guidance counselor.
* Zachery Ty Bryan as Eric Stark: a jock who seduces and then humiliates Lisa, resulting in her suicide.
* John Doe as Boyd: Rachel's foster father
* Charlotte Ayanna as Tracy Campbell: a popular cheerleader who is interested in Jesse.
* Rachel Blanchard as Monica Jones: Tracy's best friend.
* Justin Urich as Brad Winters: football player and Monica's boyfriend.
* Mena Suvari as Lisa Parker: Rachel's best friend, who commits suicide.
* Elijah Craig as Chuck Potter: football player.
* Eddie Kaye Thomas as Arnold: Rachel's friend.
* Clint Jordan as Sheriff Kelton
* Kate Skinner as Emilyn: Rachel's foster mother
* Gordon Clapp as Mr. Stark: Eric's father
* Steven Ford as Coach Walsh
* Deborah Meschan as Deborah: One of Monica's friends who takes part in setting Rachel up
* Katt Shea as Deputy D.A.
* Robert D.Raiford as The Senior D.A.
* Rhoda Griffis as Mrs. Porter: A Saleswoman
* Sissy Spacek as Carrie White via archival flashbacks: Rachel's deceased half-sister, and the protagonist of the original film. Sissy Spacek turned down an offer to cameo in the film but gave permission to have her scenes used in the form of flashbacks.

Production

Development

Originally titled ''The Curse'', the film was not developed as a sequel to the 1976 film adaptation and began as an original story. Production was initially scheduled to start in 1996 with Emily Bergl in the lead role; however, production stalled for two years, and the plot was retooled as a ''Carrie'' sequel. The plot involving the high school jocks who use a point system to rate their sexual conquests is inspired from a real-life 1993 sex scandal involving a group known as the Spur Posse. The film went into production in 1998 under the title ''Carrie 2: Say You're Sorry''.

A few weeks into production, director Robert Mandel quit over creative differences and Katt Shea took over the reins with less than a week to prepare to start filming, and two weeks' worth of footage to reshoot. Shea was initially hesitant to take over, but was told everyone would be fired and the film would be shelved if she did not. Portions of the film were filmed in a North Carolina house designed by the iconic architect Gene Leedy.

Casting

Amy Irving reprised the role of Sue Snell, which she originated in the first ''Carrie'', though she was initially wary of taking the role and asked Brian De Palma, director of the original film, for his blessing. In a 2024 interview, Irving said De Palma and herself liked the original director resumably Robert Mandel factoring into her agreement to perform in it. She said "I'm sorry I ever made that film. ... Except they paid me a shitload of money." Director Shea was told that she would not be able to use footage of Sissy Spacek from the original ''Carrie'', but she edited several scenes into the film and presented the film to Spacek, who granted permission for her likeness to be used.

Release

Box office

''The Rage: Carrie 2'' was released by United Artists on March 12, 1999. It opened in second place that weekend but was not successful. It grossed a total of $17,762,705 domestically against a $21 million budget, making the film a box office disappointment.

Home media

The film was released on VHS and DVD on October 12, 1999, and Laserdisc on November 9. A Blu-ray version of the film was released on April 14, 2015, in a double feature with the 2002 TV version of '' Carrie'' from Scream Factory. This edition went out of print in October 2019.

Reception

Critical response

The film received mostly negative reviews upon its release. Rotten Tomatoes reported the film had a 23% approval rating based on 39 reviews with the consensus: "As disposable as its predecessor is indispensable, ''The Rage: Carrie 2'' mimics the arc of Stephen King's classic story without adding anything of value." On Metacritic, it had a rating of 42 on a scale from 0–100 based on 21 reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews.

Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, deriding its recycling of the plot of the original ''Carrie'' and the contrivances employed to make the same plot happen over again, though he briefly credited Bergl for delivering a good performance considering the weakness of the material. Anita Gates of ''The New York Times'' characterized it as "an uninspired updated" and "typical B-movie making. The actors are attractive and do credible jobs, and in the tradition of the original film, there's one really good scare at the end." Both Ebert and Gates commented on the absurdity of the scene at the high school's ruins, which had not been cleared away despite two decades having passed. Dennis Harvey of ''Variety'' panned the film, noting that it "uses the original as a blueprint, but leaves out all the wit, sympathy and bravado." He criticized the recycling of ideas and even footage from the original film, and found the characters all lifeless, particularly compared to their counterparts from the original film.

Ty Burr of ''Entertainment Weekly'' gave the film a more favorable B-minus rating. He wrote, "The most satisfying change writer Rafael Moreu (''Hackers'') and director Katt Shea (''Poison Ivy'') have made is to their heroine. Where the original Carrie White was a sheltered, cringing wallflower, Rachel Lang (whose relationship to Carrie is a mid-film secret I won’t spoil) is a foster-home Goth grrrl: pale, defiant, seething with surface-level cynicism. She’s the antithesis of the glamorous faux nerd played by Rachael Leigh Cook in ''She's All That'', and newcomer Emily Bergl portrays her with a nicely sulky empathy, equal parts hurt and hope." Kevin Thomas of the ''Los Angeles Times'' championed the film as a "well-directed sequel" that treats the supernatural elements as simply obligatory devices while focusing instead on the deep and realistic social drama. He also praised Bergl as demonstrating "exceptional presence and range".

John Kenneth Muir wrote that the abrupt death of Sue Snell was "certainly powerful in terms of shock effect, but it also makes the rest of the film seem incomplete. All the time we invested in Sue goes exactly nowhere and amounts to nothing."

In retrospective reviews, critics praised the film's depiction of toxic masculinity, with some commenting that the focus on the sexual misconduct committed by the male characters makes the film surprisingly timely, particularly in the wake of the MeToo movement.

Soundtrack

The accompanying soundtrack album was released on March 23, 1999, by Edel Records.

Track listing

References

External links

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''The Rage: Carrie 2'' at AllMovie
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rage: Carrie 2, The
1999 films
1999 horror films
1990s high school films
1990s teen horror films
1990s supernatural horror films
American high school films
American sequel films
American supernatural horror films
American teen horror films
Carrie (franchise)
American films about revenge
Films about bullying
Films about rape in the United States
Films about telekinesis
Films about virginity
Films set in 1989
Films set in 1999
Films set in 2000
Films set in Maine
Films shot in North Carolina
Films shot in South Carolina
United Artists films
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
Films directed by Katt Shea
Films about mass murder
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
English-language horror films