THE RAGE: CARRIE II

One of Hollywood’s moviemaking axioms is that sequels never live up to their originals, and that axiom certainly applies to this entertaining, but hollow, follow-up to the critically acclaimed (that is, as teenage horror pictures go) CARRIE, starring Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving and John Travolta.

It is now 10 years after the incidents in the first CARRIE movie. Carrie’s little stepsister, Rachel, played by Emily Bergly, has grown up and is herself attending high school in the same small town where Carrie went ballistic and wiped out most of her fellow students. Rachel is having a pretty stressful life of her own. Not only has she gone through the traumatic loss of her mother, who was taken away raving mad by the police, but her best friend Lisa has committed suicide because she has been dumped after losing her virginity to Eric, who is part of a clique of football players that seduce girls for competition, while they keep a running log on the quality of their conquests. To make matters worse, Rachel is not too popular because she is somewhat of an odd intellectual bohemian attending a very cynical, plastic high school. Finally, when Jesse, the most popular boy on the team, takes a liking to Rachel, his cheerleader girlfriend slowly boils over with envy.

Grieving over the loss of her friend Lisa, Rachel tries to do whatever she can to help the authorities investigate Lisa’s death. Eric’s buddies will not have any of this and hope to silence Rachel by plotting to frighten and humiliate her. Meanwhile, Jessie winds up becoming an unwitting accomplice to the group’s dastardly plans.

Regrettably for them, however, Rachel has inherited her sister’s powers to move objects with her mind, an ability that does not go unnoticed by the school counselor, played by Amy Irving, the sole survivor of the first movie. The counselor tries to prevent another tragedy, even going so far as to helping Rachel’s mom escape from the mental hospital. Of course, all is for naught, and the stage is set for Rachel’s telekinetic muscles to bring a new wave of deadly vengeance on her cruel and cunning tormentors.

Whereas in the first movie, teenage sex did not play much of a role at all, in THE RAGE: CARRIE II, sex is everything, even though there are negative consequences to sex without love in the movie. It is not enough, however, to use such a hot social issue as sex among teenagers, or to borrow endlessly from ROMEO AND JULIET, to make up for the effects of an ultimately unimaginative, though entertaining, script, lack of suspense, sacrilegious use of Christian icons, graphic sex, and gratuitous foul language.