STEPHEN KING’S CARRIE: THE BOOK VS THE MOVIE
Quick Warning, there will be spoilers.
Stephen King’s Carrie was first published in 1974 and it tells the story of Carrie White, a young girl with telekinetic powers who is bullied at school and abused at home by her fanatically religious mother, Margaret White. The novel follows the events leading up to prom, at which after getting particularly humiliated Carrie uses her powers to…well…to fuck shit up.
HOW CARRIE CAME TO BE
Carrie is King’s first published novel and it seems like if you know anything about Stephen King you know that he and his wife were living paycheck to paycheck, he wrote the first three pages of Carrie, didn’t like it, threw it out, his wife found it in the trash, read it and convinced him to keep working on it.
And he became very rich and very famous.
Two years later the film version of Carrie was released, directed by Brian DePalma from a screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen and starring Sissy Spacek as Carrie White. It follows the main plot points of the book fairly closely, mostly deviating in the overall structure and small details that I think make big differences.
But I’ll get to that.
It was a big hit with moviegoers as well as critics and has since become one of the most revered horror films of all time.
But, I think the book works better and for a couple of key differences.
(I’m sure you can find other places that point to all the minute differences between the book and the movie; like how Carrie looks in the book versus how Sissy Spacek looks in the film. I’m not interested in that stuff, I’m only going to be talking about changes that affect the actual story and, in my mind, make the book work slightly better than the film).
SHOULD THE MOVIE CARRIE BE MORE LIKE BLAIR WITCH?
While the film version of Carrie is a straightforward narrative, telling us the story, mainly through the perspective of Carrie, the events from her getting her first period to prom night; the book is has many, many, many more epistolary elements.; interviews with neighbors about what Carrie was like as a child, excerpts from a book Sue Snell has written about what happened, medical journals.
Now…
I’m not sure adopting that style would make for a better movie, a sort-of found footage/documentary version of Carrie, that could end up…very silly on screen; however I do think that it works really well in the book. I think it gives the book a little more weight and grounds the events in the real world.
I liked getting a little bit of Carrie’s childhood. There’s a great scene where Carrie is caught by Margarat staring at a neighbor girl in a bikini and subsequently brings a flood of rocks raining down on their home.
“She gathered her up and they went in. I turned off my radio and I could hear her. Some of the words, but not all. You didn’t have to hear all the words to know what was going on. Praying and sobbing and screeching. Crazy sounds. And Margaret telling the little girl to get herself into her closet and pray. The little girl crying and screaming that she was sorry, she forgot. Then nothing.”
It’s a genuinely tense and scary scene that’s heightened by the fact it’s told from the neighbor’s perspective making us never really sure what’s going on inside the house. And I think, practically, the moments of “found documents” helps us jump perspectives without it being too jarring because…
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS IS TERRIFIC!
The book feels more like an ensemble piece, which I liked. This is obviously harder to do in a 90 minute movie than it is in a book, but every character in the book is fleshed out and their motivations are clear and…I don’t think I’d call all of their motivations sympathetic, but understandable…able to be understood even when they’re vile. Yes, it’s still about Carrie, but she feels more like the epicenter of events rather than the one person we’re seeing this story through.
A great example is the scene where Miss Desjardin is talking with the principal after Carrie gets her period. In the book, that scene is told from the perspective of Desjardin and it really gives us a glimpse into not only her, but the principal as well. While in the movie Carrie is the focus of the scene. We stay outside with her while the conversation is going on in the office. It’s not a bad choice, but I think if we invested a little more time seeing these events through the eyes of other characters it creates more of a sense of all of these individual people taking actions that are leading them towards disaster, rather than an event that happens to them.
YOU CAN’T JUST WALK OUT OF A DRIVE-IN
No disrespect to John Travolta, I think he’s a great actor, but Billy Nolan in the book is a sadistic psychopath and Billy Nolan in the movie is…Danny Zuko. I think Billy Nolan might be the scariest thing in the book version of Carrie. The scene where they go to kill the pig is dark and violent.
“Pig blood for a pig. Yes, that was good, all right. That was really good. He smiled, and Lou Garson felt a start of surprise and fear. He was not sure he could recall ever having seen Billy Nolan smile before. There had not even been rumors.”
Billy in the movie is kind of silly, a prankster. It doesn’t NOT work and if you haven’t read the book, I don’t think it would ever stand out as a problem (it didn’t to me before I had read the book) but after you read what that character could be and what he adds to the story, it’s a shame he’s not more of a threat.
Don’t get me started on the Abercrombie model in the 2013 remake.
CARRIE THE MONSTER
Sissy Spacek is the perfect Carrie White, she is phenomenal in this movie. You feel so deeply for her through the entire film and she is also very scary when things take a turn during prom. BUT I think the movie turns her into a little too much of a monster. She becomes this unquestioning, unfeeling killing machine and in the book there’s a little more turmoil there. In the book she’s still that same awkward girl, but she’s angry and she’s hurt and she’s lashing out with these insane powers in a way that makes you feel like, if she survived, she would regret her actions later on. And it is a choice, in the book after the blood is dropped on her head she runs out of the school and after a moment, makes the decision to go back in.
“She would pick herself up very soon now, and sneak home by the back streets, keeping to the shadows in case someone came looking for her, find Momma, admit she had been wrong –
(!! NO !!)
(...) It was time to teach them a lesson. Time to show them a thing or two. She giggled hysterically. It was one of Momma’s pet phrases.”
In the film, it’s more like she just loses it and starts causing havoc, which I think takes away her agency and makes it a little less powerful.
I like both the book and the film version of Carrie a lot.
They're different and that’s good.
It’s an adaptation into a new medium and it should be a different experience. Although if we ever remake this again..and who are we kidding? Of course they’re going to, can we just cut the library montage where Carrie checks out a bunch of books on telekinesis? Like…she’s discovering and learning about her powers…we get it. What they’ll probably do when they make this again is have her find a bunch of tiktoks on telekinesis and that’s how she’ll learn about her powers.
Also, fair warning, there’s a smattering of racism in the book version. And I don’t mean there are racist characters, I mean there are a handful of very jarring moments where King uses some very offensive language and racial stereotypes. I always knew he was accused of using the magical black person trope in a lot of his stories, but I wasn’t prepared for the casual racism in the book.
And as far as the film goes DePalma’s camera, very much, sexualizes these young girls. Obviously the opening shower scene, but you also get the camera lingering on Spacek’s breasts at one point, when Margaret's reaction to seeing Carrie dressed like that is the point of the scene…not just ogling her chest. I think sexuality is a part of the story, or it can be, I’m not sure that it’s essential. To be honest, I haven’t really thought about it enough, but there’s a difference between telling a story about sexuality and sexualizing a story, which I think the film does.
Anyway! Know all that going in!
I’ve seen a handful of movies based on King’s work, I had never read a Stephen King book before Carrie and I really enjoyed it. I’m going to keep reading his book in publication order and then watch the film adaptations after, up next is ‘salem’s Lot!
