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Stephen King

Doctor Sleep: Facing Our [Literal] Demons

November 9, 2019 by Jason Thai Leave a Comment

[Caution: The following review contains spoilers for Doctor Sleep.]

A continuation of Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror movie, The Shining, Doctor Sleep takes place after the events that occurred at the Overlook Hotel and follows the now grown-up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor). Doing his best to live with the horror that transpired as a child, Danny is tired and beaten by life. Doing his best to forget his past, Danny drinks his problems away in an attempt to repress his ‘shining’. To Danny, his ability is nothing short of a curse, until he meets Abra, a young girl in trouble who also has the shining and is much more powerful than him. Abra needs help fighting a sinister group called “The True Knot”, a group of shining users that want to murder and leech off of others who possess the shining in order to stop their aging. Dan decides to work together with Abra to save and stop this group from continuing their centuries long murder spree. 

For most of his life, Danny lives as a drifter, travelling city to city to get by. Constantly on the run from his personal issues including the traumatic events at the Overlook hotel, Danny has become a drunken selfish drifter that lives his life by drinking his problems away, sleeping with random woman and stealing from them. When he moves to a small town on the East coast, he finally finds a community, a job, a place to stay, and seems to have overcome his alcohol addiction. However, he still has not yet dealt with the pain of his own past. For example, in one particular scene, the film takes us travels into a mental representation of the Overlook hotel in Danny’s mind. Here, in a metaphor for Danny’s locking away and repression of his personal demons, we see dozens of boxes locked up with the ghosts of the hotel. Having repressed his powers for his whole life, when he meets up with Abra as she is looking for help to defeat the True Knot group, Danny tells her to hide and to stop using her powers altogether. 

Eventually, Danny must visit the Overlook Hotel and face the source of his trauma and even confront the ghost of his father, Jack. In doing so, Danny finally has the opportunity to challenge his father, venting his years of anguish as a result of his father’s actions. Given that his alcohol addiction remains a big internal conflict for Danny, his confrontation with his father helps him realize that his addiction was a result of him trying to relate to Jack, the father he used to look up to. When Jack offers Danny a drink, calling it ‘medicine to get on with life’, Danny is forced to choose between his sobriety and submitting to his own demons. 

Ironically, this scene is just one that parallels Jack’s story arc in the original movie. Like his son, Jack was also someone struggling with addiction, a tortured soul trying to survive. (In fact, at one point, Danny even becomes possessed by the same spirit of the hotel that possessed his father, attacking Abra with an axe and chasing her throughout the hotel.) However, unlike Jack, Danny is able to overcome the ghost, allowing him to finally move on from his father. Later, Danny even comes to realize that he was wrong about the shining and that it is a gift that should be used openly and embraced.

Doctor Sleep is a great sequel to The Shining. Picking up in modern times and giving science to the shining ability, Sleep becomes more of a thriller/superhero movie than the horror of the original. In fact, the film is a great redemption story to the broken Danny, who has become a grizzled old man who is broken and struggling with addiction. He’s also a great contrast with his partner Abra, an optimistic preppy young girl that looks forward to the journey they’re set on. Doctor Sleep also hits the nostalgia factor by referencing the iconic lines, locations and ghosts from the original movie. Overall, I recommend Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited sequel is an exciting thriller that does justice to the original movie.

Doctor Sleep scares its way into theatres on Friday, November 8th, 2019.

Filed Under: Film, Premieres Tagged With: Bruce Greenwood, Doctor Sleep, Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Stephen King, The Shining

The Dark Tower Ending Explained

June 28, 2018 by Matt Hill 1 Comment

screenfish matt hill dark tower
[there be SPOILERS ahead,
may it do ya fine]

yesterday i finished
sai Stephen King’s
The Dark Tower series –
entered the clearing
at the end of that path

it took me right around a year,
all told;
i think the longest extended
narrative i’ve ever read

by way of a mini-review:
i dug it 🙂

i’m a fan of King
and his style,
and the story here is
obv epic in scope,
full of wonders, adventure,
humor, tragedy,
characters you can relate to,
ones you wish you couldn’t,
and, ultimately,
it MEANS something
(more on that soon)

it was not perfect,
certainly –
many sections
and even entire books
got to be a bit of a slog
(like the characters’
journeys themselves),
there were build ups
to ultimate let downs,
promises not kept imo,
digressions, confusions, etc.,
much of which may be
due to the series’
long, fascinating
actual history
(which you can google) –
but in the end, for me,
it was worth the trip
for sure

saying more would only
hold up what i
mainly intend to say:

The Dark Tower Ending Explained

so what does the
series
and its ending
mean?

for such a long,
complex tale,
and such a
seemingly tricky question,
it’s surprisingly simple

The Dark Tower is
a story about stories

what about stories?

they end.

they themselves
inevitably reach
the clearing
at the end of the path.

to shoot straighter:
stories resolve.

King himself,
near the end of Book 7,
the last,
even cheekily
chides the reader
for needing
an ending,
basically daring us
not to read on;
but nevertheless,
he gives us the end
as he knows he must

and, also, as well,
the specific end he gives,
in context,
underlines the point:
stories resolve

see, The Dark Tower
is about how
“there are other worlds
than these;”
about, basically,
“the multiverse” –
the idea that
there are
different worlds,
and also that the lives
of the different
people within them
(including those of
King himself and
his decades-deep
cast of characters)
are somehow
actually happening together,
intertwined in space/time

sitting at
multiverse center?
the Dark Tower itself –
the nexus of all worlds

a knight errant –
Roland Deschain,
the gunslinger,
the main character –
is destined by ka
to seek this tower
and reach the
room at its summit;
the series tells
of this quest

at the end of Book 7,
the coda,
Roland reaches the
top of the tower,
only to walk through
a door
(and back in time)
to the opening line
of Book 1:

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

in other words,
the multiverse
is not only made
of many worlds,
it also apparently
runs in many cycles –
the “end” is
just the beginning

but, however,
most ultimately importantly,
just as the many worlds
of the multiverse
converge on the one spot,
one thing for Roland
is different
in this one new cycle
that begins at the end:
he has an item
(the Horn of Eld,
though the specifics
probably aren’t
what’s important)
which promises
the possibility
of a final and last cycle –
an actual end,
the inevitable resolution

So What?

great question 🙂

one this post
won’t address

but i encourage you
to ask more deeply:

why do stories resolve?

why must they?

why must we humans
tell them –
all of them variations
of the same
resolving tale,
over and over?

(for a bit of
my personal take, see:
“What IT Means (and How *Any* Good Story ‘Means’)”

here’s a hint:
it has something to do
with Gan (God),
commala come you)

in any case,
long days
and pleasant nights
to ya –
till you too
reach the clearing

 

Filed Under: Books, OtherFish, Reviews Tagged With: book, childe roland, Christian, crimson king, ending, explained, interpretation, jake, meaning, metaphor, movie, religious, resolution, roland, roland deschain, spiritual, Stephen King, the dark tower, tower

What IT Means (and How *Any* Good Story “Means”)

September 12, 2017 by Matt Hill Leave a Comment

this thing you’re reading
is going to have
zero jump scares in
three expedient little parts:

1. a micro-review of the
2017 movie IT

2. mini-musing on the
meaning of IT

3. more mini-musing on
how *any* good story
“means” in a similar way

so, here we go…

IT Reviewed

you know what IT was?

super good, i thought

it made great use of
the superb,
monstrously mineable
source novel
(by the by-now-legendary
Stephen King);
captured that novel’s
unique blend of
coming-of-age story
and horror story
(thankfully ditching
the adults for now,
nailing the terrifying
scary/funny of Pennywise);
masterfully employed
genre movie tropes;
was well cast,
well acted,
capitalized on
1980s nostalgia
(no small thanks to
Stranger Things);
heck, it was even
timed and marketed
nearly perfectly

was it perfect?
nah.
imo there were
some pacing quibbles,
some moments where
i was taken out
the moment,
etc., (i could go on),
but, bottom line,
IT is excellent,
and especially if
you’re already a
fan of the story,
seeing it’s a no-brainer

IT Dissected

but what does IT mean?

the beauty here is:
most people already know,
or have a sense of it,
anyway;
the movie even does
(what i’d call a
too-heavy-handed)
bit of service here, having
Pennywise literally speak
his symbolism aloud –
“FEAR” –
as he is dispatched
(for now)
by “the losers”

and what defeats
Pennywise/FEAR?
something like
courage through
togetherness,
something like
love –
the central image of
the signed cast
with “loser”
made into “lover”
becoming a sort-of
stand-in for the point of
whole damn thing

(reminding people
familiar with scripture,
maybe,
of lines like
“perfect love casts out
all fear;”
prompting questions,
perhaps,
like:
how are the losers
like the church?)

but tbh, to me,
these meanings are
pretty clear,
pretty obv;
they are, tbh,
too big to miss

i don’t disagree with them,
of course,
but i found myself watching,
remembering the book,
and wanting to take time
to unpack some of IT‘s
knottier themes –
how does sexuality tie in?
cuz it seems to;
how do the kids’ parents?
they seem to;
what about race and
identity and history and
how they’re related?
does King mean to say
that growing up and
fear are inextricable?
(the book, of course,
provides plenty
more fodder for
these kinds of questions)

however, i promised
mini-musing only
and zero jump scares,
and so these peripherals,
uberrelated tho they be,
aren’t for here/now

besides,
IT is a good story,
at least partly,
because
its themes
and meanings –
losers become lovers,
evil dies to good –
operate at this totemic,
mythically big
and primal
level of largeness

which gets us to…

IT Related

finally,
i want to say
something like:
all good stories
(like IT) –
inevitably,
when dug at
deeply enough –
will have a
thematic bigness
like i’ve just described;
and it’s this bigness,
at least partly,
that makes us
see them as good
and which allows them to
“mean”
for us in such a
consistent,
seemingly ever-present
and popular-to-the-
point-of-compulsive
way

if i were being
Jungian or Campbellian,
i might say:
all good stories
are variations of
the monomyth

if i were being Christian,
which i am,
i would say:
all good stories are
reverberating echoes –
forward and backward
through time –
of the true story
of the universe…
the one where
good defeats evil
through love…
the one about Jesus

C.S. Lewis,
in The Voyage of
the Dawn Treader,
said it like this:

On the next page she came to a spell ‘for the refreshment of the spirit.’ The pictures were fewer here but very beautiful. And what Lucy found herself reading was more like a story than a spell. It went on for three pages and before she had read to the bottom of the page she had forgotten that she was reading at all. She was living in the story as if it were real, and all the pictures were real too. When she had got to the third page and come to the end, she said, “That is the loveliest story I’ve ever read or ever shall read in my whole life. Oh, I wish I could have gone on reading it for ten years. At least I’ll read it over again.”

But here part of the magic of the Book came into play. You couldn’t turn back. The right-hand pages, the ones ahead, could be turned; the left-hand pages could not.

“Oh, what a shame!” said Lucy. “I did so want to read it again. Well, at least I must remember it. Let’s see . . . it was about . . . about . . . oh dear, it’s all fading away again.

And even this last page is going blank. This is a very queer book. How can I have forgotten? It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much. But I can’t remember and what shall I do?”

And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.

so,
do you have
a sense
that you know –
very, very deeply
in your heart,
though you can’t
fully explain it –
a magic story?
a story that
is the best thing ever?
so much so that
every other good story
reminds you of it?

a sense that

There’s a song that’s inside of my soul.
It’s the one that I’ve tried to write over and over again.
I’m awake in the infinite cold,
But You sing to me over and over again.

in the words of
“Only Hope”
by Switchfoot?

a sense that,
for example,
when Pennywise loses,
you somehow win,
because there’s
something afoot there
that’s more than
just that story?
that there’s
something afoot there
that’s story itself –
a story you’re
actually a part of?

maybe?

take a moment
to consider…

yes? no?

maybe not.

maybe i took
The Neverending Story
too seriously.

but, then again,
maybe that’s just
another good example
of exactly 
what i’m talking about

and maybe –
oh, so hopefully –
maybe now,
you might
at least
consider
seeing it so too

don’t be scared…
try it

Filed Under: Editorial, Film, Reviews Tagged With: campbell, Christ, Christian, clown, CS Lewis, Faith, Fear, God, horror, It, jung, Love, meaning, movie, narnia, pennywise, spiritual, Stephen King, story, switchfoot

Some (Fairly Jesusy) Summer Reading List Quick Hits

June 28, 2017 by Matt Hill Leave a Comment

if you’re like
plenty other people
(and you are, cuz
look at all us humans,
so much more alike
than different),
then you may
intentionally
read more than normal
during summer months

many of us
(obv including me
in this case)
make a
“Summer Reading List”
of sorts

(actually, i didn’t
necessarily purposely
set out to make said list,
i simply realized:
i have a bunch of books
i’m currently perusing, so…)

anyhoo, here you go:
“Some (Fairly Jesusy)
Summer Reading List
Quick Hits”

(Amazon all of these if you’re
persuaded to peruse too;
i have not been compensated
for what follows
(though perhaps should be 🙂 ))

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It
Stephen King

this is the only
“non-Jesusy” book
i got going
(though, imo,
*everything* is Jesusy
when you think
about it right)
and i’ve been at it for months
cuz it is a TOME . .
but i love me some King,
though i’d never read
this one till now

re-hit my radar
(after dropping off,
honestly, since that 1990 movie)
due to the run-up
to the new one –
which looks quite cool –
and i’m so glad it did:
i’m approx 3/4 through
and thoroughly hooked into
seeing the story play out

King has, undoubtedly,
a great sense for the
bittersweetness
of youth
(no surprise,
the bits with the kids
are the best parts here;
in related news, see my
“Eternal Summer”)
and effortlessly
turns phrases
as you turn pages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Day the Revolution Began
N.T. Wright

i’m a fan of
Wright’s writings,
but this one snuck
past last year

perhaps a third in
and here are my three
main takeaways thus far
(caveat: *my* takeaways,
not necessarily things
Wright explicitly says):

  1. focusing on a very specific
    and delineated
    “theory of atonement,”
    perhaps,
    not our wisest move;
    better, perhaps,
    to simplify to
    something like:
    “there is something wrong;
    Jesus makes it right”
  2. Jesus makes it right,
    most largely,
    *vocationally* speaking;
    this isn’t about
    “heaven after you die,”
    but about God
    remaking reality,
    and us
    (amazingly, now)
    taking back up
    our role in that
  3. what are Christians for?
    worship and witness.
    that’s it.
    i like that cuz it’s
    so. simple.
    and seems so
    clearly right
    (and the alliteration
    don’t hurt either)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Is the Bible?
Rob Bell

i dig Rob Bell
and have for years,
ever since listening to
Mars Hill sermons
on podcast

Velvet Elvis is still
one my faves,
and though i get the
concern over controversy
(with Love Wins
and already now with
this one – the
specter of heresy,
perhaps,
rearing its head again),
i still just
appreciate Bell’s approach
in general,
for plenty reasons

just a bit in, but
so far so good;
the insights coming
fast
as
line breaks
🙂

tldr: looking forward to
continuing sifting it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crazy Love
Francis Chan

read at least part of this
at some point in the past,
but can’t pull much of it
from the brain ether, tbh
(don’t get old, kids)

that said, it was
much lauded at the time,
and i remember
making a point to buy, read;
and the
multiple dog-ears in the
copy i’m revisiting tell me:
there are some nuggets there

full disclosure: reading this one
along with my wife
as part of a church group . .
so this one? . .
this one’s about
reading together –
the word
*in community* –
and that seems
just perfect to me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unbelievable?
Justin Brierley

the Unbelievable podcast
has become a
weekly date for me;
if you’ve never listened,
Google it and do –
you won’t be disappointed

long story short:
Brierley hosts (typically)
a Christian and a
non-Christian each episode,
and moderates a
discussion/debate/depends
about apologetics-related topics –
is there a God?
is Christianity true?
etc. etc.

it’s *fabulous*

this book encapsulates
Brierley’s experiences
doing the podcast
for over a decade,
and (most importantly)
explains his personal
case for Christ –
why he’s still a Christian –
esp. given that he’s had
atheism’s creme de la creme
(Dawkins, Hitchens, et. al.)
in studio

about half finished with this
and it’s all i’d hoped:
simple, concise,
behind-the-scenes fascinating,
convincing,
uplifting

Filed Under: Editorial, OtherFish, Reviews Tagged With: Christian, christian books, crazy love, francis chan, It, justin brierley, n.t. wright, rob bell, Stephen King, summer reading list, unbelievable, what is the bible

11.22.63: Stephen King Takes on History

August 17, 2016 by Jacob Sahms Leave a Comment

11.22.63

11.22.63, Stephen King’s time-bending novel, has been adapted by Bridget Carpenter (Friday Night Lights, The Red Road) for Hulu. Now, available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD, 11.22.63 takes us on a twisty road from the present back to the 1960s in a darker Back to the Future.

James Franco’s Jake Epping suffers. His marriage has crumbled and his English career seems pointless. But when his friend Al Templeton (Chris Cooper) dies, Epping is thrust into the mission Templeton died trying to complete: he must go back in time and stop Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webster) from killing JFK. But if that’s not complicated enough…

The Yellow Card Man (Kevin J. O’Connor) keeps showing up telling him that he shouldn’t be ‘here’.

Epping tries to save one of his student’s from tragedy as a child.

Every move Epping makes changes something else thanks to the Butterfly Effect.

11.22.63.2

Traveling back in time is complicated!

While I loved the book – and cringed at what it might become as a miniseries – I found the overall vibe of the show to be aligned with King’s original. I found the ideas around responsibility and cause-and-effect to be thought-provoking. There are elements of horror and suspense (Josh Duhamel’s Frank Dunning is a particularly terrifying butcher), but the historical progression for Epping, Oswald, and the politics surrounding them are intriguing as well.

What options do we have to change the future? What difference can we make today? This just isn’t about JFK and the past – this is about owning our future, and taking responsibility, right now.

Special features include a look at adapting the story, filming on location, modeling the set for the 1960s, and Franco as director.

Filed Under: DVD, Featured, Reviews, SmallFish, Television Tagged With: 11.22.63, J. J. Abrams, James Franco, JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, Stephen King

Carrie–The Least of These

August 28, 2015 by Jason Norton 1 Comment

screamfish iter 2Consider: You’re an adolescent girl teetering on the cusp of womanhood, and you have an uncanny ability that allows you to move objects with your mind. You hide your powers away, scared of what you may do with them, scared of what others may do to you if they discover your secret. Then, one day, someone sees something wonderful in you and your ability, something beautiful in your red hair and bright smile that you’ve only ever seen as ordinary. And they take you in and surround you with a loving family, and they teach you how to embrace your ability and how to use it for good and soon, you are driving back the nightmares that haunt everything around you. And though the world may fear and despise you, you continue to fight for the good that you still manage to see through the hate. You are Jean Grey, and you are an X-Man.

Consider: You’re an adolescent girl teetering on the cusp of womanhood, and you have an uncanny ability that allows you to move objects with your mind. You hide your powers away, scared of what you may do with them, scared of what others may do to you if they discover your secret. Then one day, someone sees something wicked in you and your ability, something ugly in your red hair and bright smile that you’ve only ever seen as ordinary. They shun you and admonish your ability, warning that others will only ostracize you if your powers are revealed. And despite your hopes, that prediction comes true and in the instant of your greatest rejection and humiliation, you lash out, using your abilities to strike down your adversaries, orchestrating a nightmare of death and destruction the likes of which has never been seen in your tiny corner of the world. You are Carrie White, and you are all alone.

Stephen King credits some of his peculiar high school classmates as the inspiration for Carrie (his fourth novel, but the first to actually see publication)—that and an article in Time magazine about telekinesis. Whatever its origin, Carrie is the perfect horror twist on the classic superhero stereotype. It hit just the right audience at just the right time and launched King’s almost 50-year career. And the film adaptation has become nothing short of legendary, consistently named as one of the scariest movies ever. It even garnered two Oscar nominations for lead actress Sissy Spacek and supporting actress Piper Laurie.

It is a tortured, masterful tale that repulses and endears. It’s the ultimate revenge movie for anyone who’s ever been picked on or pushed around. But its ending is so difficult to swallow that it can literally leave you depressed for days (don’t you judge us).

But man is it ever good, on so many levels—even on a theological one.

Join us as we dance through the horror and heartache that is Carrie.

And just a suggestion: you might want to wear red.

Prom.

Has there ever been so common an event so romanticized, anticipated, dreaded, endeared and despised by so many on an annual basis for so long? Chances are, you still have photos of your own magical night tucked in an album somewhere. Maybe there’s a withered corsage pressed between the pages. Or at the very least, you remember the name of that certain someone that walked in on your arm that night. Maybe they’re still beside you to this day, decades later.

Nowadays, proms can be elaborate affairs, often held in off-campus banquet facilities with extravagant themes and budgets. But way back in 1976, most proms looked pretty much the same: push back the bleachers in the gymnasium, hang some art-class-made decorations from the rafters, hire a cheap cover band and rent a ruffle tux (or buy a gown with something called “chiffon”) and get your boogie woogie oogie on.

But there was one prom that defied the norm that year.

It all went down at the fictitious Bates High in Carrie, the feature film based upon Stephen King’s novel of the same name. And it made generations rethink the way they thought about that magical night.

The film begins a few days before the prom. Late blooming, mousy and naïeve Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) panics in the shower after gym class, when she gets her first menstrual period. Thanks to her strict religious upbringing, Carrie is clueless as to what is going on, fearing that she is going to bleed to death.

Carrie suddenly realizes something is terribly wrong while showering in the locker room.
Her classmates, who have enjoyed a long tenure of tormenting Carrie, pelt her with tampons as they laugh and taunt her. Carrie begins to panic and suddenly all the lights in the locker room begin to explode. Turns out Carrie is telekinetic—able to move objects with her mind—and the sudden trauma coupled with her emergence into womanhood triggers her latent powers. As the rest of the girls recoil from the supposed electrical surge, fiery gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) breaks things up and consoles Carrie.

Miss Collins hands out the ultimate punishment on the bullies: revocation of their prom tickets if they don’t spend one week’s detention doing every gut-busting calisthenic she can throw at them. The ring leader, Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), refuses and loses all prom privileges. Immediately, she begins plotting revenge against Carrie (who, ironically, had nothing to do with the punishment in the first place).

Another classmate, Sue Snell (Amy Irving), feels guilty about her apathy during the attack on Carrie, and decides to be a bystander no more. She resolves to stay home from prom, deciding to set Carrie up with her football-team-captain-boyfriend, Tommy Ross (Wiliam Katt) as the ultimate prom date.

Sue and Tommy convince Miss Collins they have Carrie's best interest at heart; Tommy will be her prom date.
Meanwhile, we get a glimpse into Carrie’s homelife and it’s soon easy to understand why she is such a shrinking violet. Her insanely fanatical mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie), belittles and berates Carrie at every turn, using a constant, belligerent recitation of scripture to shame her for her uncontrollable metamorphosis into womanhood. “They’re all going to laugh at you,” she warns Carrie time and again, when she learns that Tommy has asked her to prom. After years of ridicule and closet-penance for doing nothing wrong, Carrie finally strikes back, using her powers to put the smackdown on her mother long enough to enjoy that one magical night, that first dance and maybe the kiss every girl dreams of.

Carrie's mother, Margaret, prays for her daughter's forgiveness, though, as usual, she's done nothing wrong.
But Chris hasn’t exactly been sitting around on her hands in the meantime. While Carrie was making her own prom dress, Chris was having her boyfriend, Billy Nolan (John Travolta), sneak onto a farm and kill and bleed a pig. Then she made sure to have her friends on the prom committee take the bucket of recovered pig blood and perch it, out of sight, in the rafters above the gymnasium stage. Finally, ever the schemer, Chris has her friends include Tommy and Carrie on the Royal Court voting ballot and rig the results so they will be crowned King and Queen.

Carrie’s prom begins wonderfully. She gets that dance. And that kiss.

For one brief moment, all the world is right as Tommy and Carrie are crowned King and Queen.
And then, almost unbelievably, she and Tommy are crowned King and Queen. Sue sneaks in to see the beautiful moment, all her hopes finally culminating with Carrie’s smile. But then she spies the bucket and before she can stop it, Miss Collins spots her and thwarts her, believing she is the villain. Just then, the bucket drops, dousing Carrie in a crimson cascade reminiscent of her horrible shower trauma. Tommy crumples as the bucket crashes into his head. Carrie turns to face her dumbfounded classmates but all she can see is their laughter, certain that her mother’s prophecy has come true.

The dirtiest high school prank in history. Carrie gets drenched in blood.
She turns on the crowd, friends and foes alike, unleashing a lifetime of rage and the full measure of her power. She brings down the house in a fury of flame—her own private hell— before chasing down a fleeing Chris and Tommy. And once she’s done with them, it’s time to return home to momma…

Carrie strikes back, unleashing hell on her tormentors.
Carrie’s message of bullying and the bullied resonates just as strong as it did when Brian de Palma brought it to the big screen forty years ago. Sadly, for Carrie (as for some today), home is never a refuge. The hurtful assaults of her classmates at least come from relative strangers; how much more painful must it be to be tormented by someone who supposedly loves her? Jesus warns against just such mistreatment in the Gospel of Mark. “If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea,” Christ says. Carrie’s mother, though perhaps well-intentioned, bruises her daughter’s perception of what Christ-centered love should be. Mrs. White perverts Christ’s message to keep Carrie under thumb. And Carrie, who has turned her cheek so many other times, finally can see only through her mother’s eyes, embracing her hate in a violent, hellish tirade.
Sue Snell is the only character who survives, testament to the consequences of sins of omission. Sue is haunted by the memory of Carrie and lives with regret for not stepping up to defend her earlier. Her story calls to mind more words from Jesus found in Mark.

“I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’… (Mark 23: 43-45).

When we fail to reach out or stand up, not only to or for the stranger but for those we choose to ostracize, we too will be judged harshly. But unlike Sue, our punishment may extend far beyond earthly anguish. We could be facing much, much more everlasting repercussions. It is not only our mission but our responsibility to take Christ’s love into the world to those who need it the most, whether in solitary confinement behind iron bars or the stone walls of their own internal, perhaps self-made, prisons. Everyone hurts, everyone struggles. It’s up to us to seek them out, to find them and to share the Gospel with them.

And as Carrie teaches us, waiting until the last dance is not an option.

Filed Under: DVD, Featured, Film, Reviews, ScreamFish Tagged With: bullying, Carrie, high school, Karen Allen, Sissy Spacek, Stephen King

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