If there is a narrative genre on which a lot of preconceived ideas weigh, that is terror. Many people think that both terrifying literature and cinema are not art or, in the best case, it is not important, and that nothing good and even respectable can come from there; that the authors of this genre only set the goal of frightening readers and giving championship scares to the public of their films, something childish or trivial in short. And there are even those who blame usually violent narratives such as those of terror for generating crimes in the real world, of giving bad ideas, as if the motivations of the violence did not always exist outside of fiction and this was nothing more than their reflection.
Carrie is a movie about the chilling case of a young girl of insignificant appearance who became a being of abnormal powers, sowing terror in the city. With a magical pulse to maintain the tension throughout the book, Stephen King narrates the tormented adolescence of Carrie and envelops us in an overwhelming atmosphere when the girl makes a series of discoveries until reaching the terrible moment of revenge. This novel was taken to the movies with the immense success of the public and critics.
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Stephen King is essentially recognized for his horror and suspense novels. More than any of these, Carrie is an excellent combination of suspense and fantasy, combined with a personal drama. His documentary narrative adds a touch of tension to the story. He proposes an interesting game of reality and fiction by telling fantastic facts as if they were truthful through media that tell news that we would consider true.
In terror, little is touched on the issue of women who instill fear unless they are spirits, and this is where the difference lies since Carrie is a common girl, insignificant, but full of anger, and unleashing all her feelings creates unstoppable chaos.
I find it interesting how Stephen handles different voices during the story. Since he had to write journalistic notes, witness testimonies of the events, intimate letters, and even inscriptions that were on the walls of the Ewen School (where Carrie studied). The main narrator is omniscient. Know the thoughts and actions of all the characters. It is sometimes placed from the perspective of each of the characters showing us a different angle of each event. During the first part of the story, the narrator shows Carrie's interior mainly, which allows the reader to immerse himself in the mind of the protagonist and create empathy. Later let's meet Susan Snell, Tommy Ross, Christine Hargensen, Billy Nolan, and other characters.
Stephen uses anachronism to constantly show past events, as well as leaps forward in time, printing more suspense in history. At the end of this novel, we find a curious Death Certificate of Carrie White with the date, time, and causes of his death. We also find a journalistic note a few years after the tragedy of Chamberlain and a letter that leaves the reader wanting more. It turns out that the letter is sent by a small-town woman to her sister in the city telling her that her little daughter is manifesting strange telekinetic powers.
In this movie, we see children abused by their parents, stepparents, or a relative with whom they live, which is immersed as a secondary plot, but of equal importance. Many neighbors of Carrie White for years turned a blind eye to the irregularities they saw at the White's house, never reporting to justice what they saw.
In the horror movie Carrie we can feel like the worse the protagonist goes through, the more we enjoy, and this happens in most horror movies even though we do not realize that. In this way, meanwhile, the difficulties that appear in Carrie’s path, the discomfort we feel are also increasing, and the fear that he will not have a happy ending. However, our hope in that remains. In this way we are reacting to the anguish of the contradiction of both paths: we want good things to happen at the same time that only bad things happen. When the end is reached in the case of Carrie we get a sad ending, that leaves us with a feeling that nothing of that should've happened, even though we felt scared most of the time we were watching the movie.
Watching Carrie already casts doubt on its end. Well, many horror movies have happy endings, but others like Carrie have tragic ends. Therefore, uncertainty is added to the tension over expectations. But the fact that at the beginning we don’t know if he will have a happy ending, increases tension and physiological activation, as well as pleasure after the end.