Plot
In 1986, Rachel Lang is placed in foster care when her mother, Barbara, is diagnosed with schizophrenia after mistaking signs of Rachel's telekinesis for demonic possession. In September 1999, Rachel, an outcast, is living with unsympathetic foster parents and attending high school. Her best friend, Lisa Parker, commits suicide by leaping from the roof of the school. Eric Stark, a popular football star, rejected her after exploiting her for sex.
Rachel finds a photograph of Lisa and Eric kissing while developing rolls of Lisa's film. Rachel turns the photo in to police, and explains that Lisa confessed to her that she had recently lost her virginity. Sheriff Kelton and the school's guidance counselor, Sue Snell, pursue statutory rape charges against Eric, who is over eighteen. Eric and his football player peers, including Mark Bing and Chuck Potter, are competing to see who could seduce the most girls.
Late one night while driving home, Jesse Ryan, another player on the football team, is flagged down by Rachel after her Basset Hound, Walter, is hit by a car. Jesse takes an interest in Rachel, to the chagrin of cheerleader Tracy Campbell, who is pursuing him. Meanwhile, having discovered that Rachel implicated them in Lisa's death, Eric and Mark attempt to scare her into silence by harassing her at her home, but her telekinetic powers frighten them away.
Sue begins to suspect Rachel may possess telekinetic powers through their counseling sessions. She tracks down Rachel's institutionalized mother, whose schizophrenia has stabilized. Barbara confesses that Rachel's father was Ralph White, the father of Carrie White. Sue brings Rachel to the ruins of the high school which Carrie destroyed in a telekinetic rage in 1976 after being humiliated at her senior prom. Sue, a peer of Carrie's, was one of the few survivors of the incident. When Sue discloses that Carrie is Rachel's half-sister, Rachel dismisses her as a liar.
The district attorney covers up the statutory rape charges against Eric because the players' families have political influence. Mark sets up a romantic getaway for Rachel and Jesse, which he covertly films. Monica Jones, the girlfriend of Mark's friend Brad Winters, befriends Rachel under false pretenses, inviting her to a party. Rachel leaves with Monica to the party, while Jesse is forced to ride with Tracy after his car's tires are slashed. Tracy stops at her house first and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce him. Meanwhile, Sue sneaks Barbara out of the institution so that she can confess Rachel's father's identity to her.
Mark and Chuck confront Rachel at the party, revealing their sex game and claiming that Rachel was added to Jesse's list of girls he has bedded. They project the footage of her and Jesse having sex for all of the partygoers to see. This triggers Rachel's telekinesis, and she seals the house closed. She causes a large window to explode, killing most of the partygoers, and triggers a fire. Sue and Barbara track Rachel to the party, but a fire-poker impales the front door, killing Sue. As Rachel pursues Monica, Eric, and Mark through the house, they arm themselves. Rachel kills Monica by causing her glasses to implode into her eyes, causing Monica to inadvertently castrate Eric with a harpoon. Mark shoots her with a flare gun and Rachel falls into the swimming pool. When Mark goes to see whether she is dead, Rachel pulls Mark into the pool. Rachel triggers the sensor to the automatic pool cover, and frees herself while Mark drowns.
Barbara accuses Rachel of being possessed, and flees. Jesse and Tracy arrive. Rachel kills Tracy by causing a piece of ceiling to collapse on her. On a balcony, Rachel confronts Jesse about his list, but he denies it. Rachel then notices that the videotape of her and Jesse, still playing in the living room, captured Jesse saying "I love you" while she slept, and realizes Jesse's feelings for her are genuine. An awning collapses on Rachel. With Jesse unable to free her, she uses her telekinesis to throw him over the balcony onto the pool cover as she burns to death.
In 2000, Jesse, now studying at King's University, shares a dormitory with Walter. He has a nightmare of kissing Rachel before she shatters into pieces.
Reception
Critical response
The film received mostly negative reviews upon its release. Rotten Tomatoes reported the film had a 23% approval rating based on 39 reviews with the consensus: "As disposable as its predecessor is indispensable, The Rage: Carrie 2 mimics the arc of Stephen King's classic story without adding anything of value." [17] On Metacritic, it had a rating of 42 on a scale from 0–100 based on 21 reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews. [18]
Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, deriding its recycling of the plot of the original Carrie and the contrivances employed to make the same plot happen over again, though he briefly credited Bergl for delivering a good performance considering the weakness of the material. [19] Anita Gates of The New York Times characterized it as "an uninspired updated" and "typical B-movie making. The actors are attractive and do credible jobs, and in the tradition of the original film, there's one really good scare at the end." [20] Both Ebert and Gates commented on the absurdity of the scene at the high school's ruins, which had not been cleared away despite two decades having passed. [19] [20] Dennis Harvey of Variety panned the film, noting that it "uses the original as a blueprint, but leaves out all the wit, sympathy and bravado." He criticized the recycling of ideas and even footage from the original film, and found the characters all lifeless, particularly compared to their counterparts from the original film. [21]
Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a more favorable B-minus rating. [22] He wrote, "The most satisfying change writer Rafael Moreu ( Hackers ) and director Katt Shea ( Poison Ivy ) have made is to their heroine. Where the original Carrie White was a sheltered, cringing wallflower, Rachel Lang (whose relationship to Carrie is a mid-film secret I won’t spoil) is a foster-home Goth grrrl: pale, defiant, seething with surface-level cynicism. She’s the antithesis of the glamorous faux nerd played by Rachael Leigh Cook in She's All That , and newcomer Emily Bergl portrays her with a nicely sulky empathy, equal parts hurt and hope." [22] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times championed the film as a "well-directed sequel" that treats the supernatural elements as simply obligatory devices while focusing instead on the deep and realistic social drama. He also praised Bergl as demonstrating "exceptional presence and range". [23]
John Kenneth Muir wrote that the abrupt death of Sue Snell was "certainly powerful in terms of shock effect, but it also makes the rest of the film seem incomplete. All the time we invested in Sue goes exactly nowhere and amounts to nothing." [24]
In retrospective reviews, critics praised the film's depiction of toxic masculinity, [7] with some commenting that the focus on the sexual misconduct committed by the male characters makes the film surprisingly timely, particularly in the wake of the MeToo movement. [25] [5]
