Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is a lonely, withdrawn high-school student, ridiculed by her classmates and brought up almost in isolation by her fanatically religious mother (Piper Laurie). When Carrie experiences her first period in the gym shower, she is ruthlessly teased and humiliated by her fellow pupils, who are in turn severely punished by their teacher.
Determined to seek revenge, the students hatch a plot against Carrie, which turns horribly wrong when Carrie’s strange telekinetic powers are unleashed during the school prom.
Stephen King‘s story of a shy teenage girl trapped between a controlling mother and the cruelty of her peers continues to grow as one of the most important horror films of our time, ripe for reconsideration. The film also examines female agency, and it remains a complicated tale of vengeance and self-destruction that speaks to both a male fear of female power and a deeply affecting expression of that power.