Plot Summary (Carrie) Carrie

Carrie White gets her first period and her classmates turn it into a public execution

Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is a sixteen-year-old outcast at Bates High School in a small town, raised in isolation by her fanatically religious mother. During a gym class volleyball game, her teammates turn on her for missing a shot.b1 In the locker room afterward, Carrie gets her first menstrual period without understanding what is happening. The other girls surround her, pelting her with tampons and chanting "Plug it up!" A lightbulb shatters above them -- the first visible sign of Carrie's telekinetic power.b2

Margaret White treats her daughter's body as a vessel for sin

Carrie's mother Margaret White (Piper Laurie) is a religious fanatic who views menstruation as divine punishment for lustful thoughts. When Carrie comes home from school, Margaret forces her to recite that the first sin was intercourse, then locks her in a prayer closet beneath a contorted Saint Sebastian figurine.b6 Margaret's theology operates as a closed system: the body is sinful, desire is sinful, and the only safety is isolation and prayer.

The shower incident splits the school into two factions

Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), the gym teacher, punishes the girls with daily detention on the athletic field. Sue Snell (Amy Irving) accepts the punishment and feels genuine remorse. Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen) refuses, calls Collins a name, gets slapped, and is barred from the prom.b9 The detention splits the girls into two camps: those who accept guilt and those who refuse it. Sue's guilt will drive her to volunteer her boyfriend Tommy as Carrie's prom date.b10 Chris's defiance will drive her to plan revenge.

Two plans converge on the same night

Sue asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross (William Katt) to take Carrie to the prom as a form of atonement.b10 Tommy visits Carrie's house and refuses to leave until she agrees,b13 connecting through a poem he read in English class that Carrie called "beautiful."b8 Meanwhile, Chris recruits Billy Nolan (John Travolta) into a revenge plot.b15 Billy kills a pig with a sledgehammer and the blood is bottled.b16 Chris and Billy rig the bucket above the prom stageb17 and the ballots are fixed.b30 Neither Carrie nor anyone protecting her knows the other plan exists.

The prom gives Carrie the best night of her life

Carrie arrives at the prom in a pink dress she made herself, trembling on Tommy's arm.b25 b26 For the first time in the film, she is folded into a group of peers who smile at her. Collins shares a memory of her own prom.b26 Tommy and Carrie dance in a 360-degree shot, and Tommy confesses the poem was not his.b28 They vote for themselves as king and queen -- "To the devil with false modesty," Tommy says.b30 They are crowned.b31 Carrie stands on the stage looking out at the audience with an expression between disbelief and joy.

The blood falls and everything Carrie has ever heard collapses into a single moment

Chris pulls the rope. The bucket of pig blood drenches Carrie on stage. The falling bucket strikes Tommy on the head.b31 Inside Carrie's mind, voices layer on top of each other -- Margaret's prophecy ("They're all gonna laugh at you"), the shower chant ("Plug it up"), the principal's wrong name ("Cassie"), Tommy's "Trust me, Carrie."b32 Every cruelty and every kindness arrives at once.

Carrie seals the gym and destroys everyone inside

Carrie seals the gym doors with telekinesis. The fire hose sweeps the floor and knocks students off their feet. De Palma films the destruction in split-screen, showing Carrie's face and the victims simultaneously. The basketball backboard drops on Collins -- the one adult who saw Carrie clearly, dead in the destruction Carrie causes. The gym burns.b33 Outside, Billy and Chris try to run Carrie over; she flips their car and it explodes.b34

Margaret's confession collapses her entire theology

Carrie returns home covered in blood and washes off in the bath.b35 Margaret holds her and begins a confession that reaches back before Carrie existed. She describes the night Carrie's father Ralph came home with whisky on his breath, and the revelation that collapses everything: "And I liked it. I liked it!"b36 Every prior Margaret scene -- the pamphlets, the closet, the "dirty pillows" -- is reframed as self-punishment for one night's pleasure.

Margaret stabs Carrie while reciting the Lord's Prayer

Margaret tells Carrie they will pray for the last time. As Carrie recites the Lord's Prayer, Margaret drives a knife into her back on "thy will be done."b37 Carrie responds with flying kitchen knives that pin Margaret to the doorframe in the Saint Sebastian pose -- the visual language Margaret imposed on her turned back against her.b38 The house collapses around them both.b39

The hand from the grave proves the doctor wrong

In the epilogue, Sue's mother reports that Sue is sleeping too much but improving. A doctor says she will forget. Sue dreams of visiting the rubble of the White house. A "For Sale" sign reads "Carrie White burns in hell." As Sue bends to place flowers, a hand -- Carrie's hand -- shoots up from the ground and grabs her wrist. Sue screams. Mrs. Snell holds her: "It's all right. I'm here."b40 The opening image showed Carrie screaming while girls threw things at her. The closing image shows Sue screaming while her mother holds her. The symmetry argues that cruelty creates consequences that outlive everyone involved.

Sources