The Rage: Carrie 2 is a 1999 horror film and a direct sequel to Carrie (1976), starring Emily Bergl, Jason London, Mena Suvari, and Amy Irving.
Teen outcast Rachel Lang sees her best friend Lisa kill herself after a Jerk Jock has sex with her in order to score points in a "game" he's playing with the rest of the team. Rachel seeks revenge against the football players that caused her friend's suicide, and along the way, learns that she possesses psychic powers. She develops a crush on Jesse, one of the wiser football players, and the two enter a relationship — much to the ire of Jesse's teammates, who start plotting against Rachel. Meanwhile, school guidance counselor Sue Snell — a survivor from the original film — finds out about Rachel's powers and steps in to help her, fearing a repeat of what happened with Carrie. Everything comes to a head at the after-party for a football game, where the jocks play a tape of Rachel and Jesse having sex.
Needless to say, that party does not end well.
The Rage was part of the post-Scream (1996) wave of hip, post-modern teen horror films, and it was originally planned as a standalone film titled The Curse.
This movie contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: While not as bad as Margaret White, Rachel's foster parents are very neglectful, and the father has no problem hitting her. In an early scene, it's strongly implied that the only reason they raise her is to get the $300 per month paid to them by the foster care system.
- Alpha Bitch: Most of the female characters fall under this trope, except Rachel and Lisa — and the latter's death opens the film.
- Artifact Title: Hey, guess who actually isn't in this movie outside of flashbacks! Then again, she did die at the end of the original film, and Rachel is later revealed to be her half-sister
- Asshole Victim: Just about all the teens Rachel targets deserve what they get.
- Bald of Evil: The jocks all shave their heads before the big game, so have bald heads when terrorizing Rachel at the end.
- Berserk Button: Rachel reacts very badly to any suggestion that she might be put in a mental hospital, given what happened to her mother.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jesse survives and Rachel kills all of her bullies during her rampage but she dies as well to Jesse's grief. On top of that, Sue was killed while trying to stop Rachel's rampage, and other than adopting Rachel's dog, Jesse is now completely alone. He also has nightmares about Rachel dissolving into pieces in front of him, the way Sue had nightmares, implying that the cycle of Redemption Failure is going to continue.
- Bullying a Dragon: This film shows why you should really lay off the schoolyard bullying when you know someone has powers (and if you don't, nobody whose life has any value will miss you).
- Chekhov's Party: The party after the big game where the massacre happens is mentioned several times near the beginning before Jesse invites Rachel. It's where she ultimately kills almost everyone.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Seeing that it's a direct sequel to Carrie (1976)...
- Rachel to Carrie: Both girls are telekinetic loners, but unlike her half-sister, Rachel is more assertive, has a best friend, manifested powers at a young age, placed in foster care, and completely aware of her massacre.
- Barbara to Margaret: Both mothers are religiously insane fundamentalists, but unlike Margaret, Barbara lost custody of Rachel very earlier, committed to a mental hospital for schizophrenia and survives to the end of the movie.
- Jesse to Tommy: The Love Interests of Rachel and Carrie respectively, with the former in love with Rachel and survives to the end as well while the latter is still dating Sue and dies at the beginning of the prom disaster.
- Mark to Chris: The Big Jerk on Campus and Alpha Bitch main antagonists. But Mark actively tries to murder Rachel during her rampage while Chris tries to run away from Carrie's. This may be an allusion to the book, where Chris also tries to murder Carrie by screaming at Billy to "kill her [Carrie]."
- Convenient Photograph: Rachel finds out that Eric was the person who seduced Lisa and caused her suicide due to developing the photograph that Lisa gave her. It also becomes a Macguffin as the only solid proof that Eric knew Lisa and played a role in her suicide and of the game more broadly, so the jocks want it back before Rachel can damage their college prospects.
- Converse with the Unconscious: After they have sex, Jesse tells a sleeping Rachel that he loves her. Those three words save his life.
- Corrupt Politician: The D.A. agrees to cover up the facts about Lisa's suicide, because the football players all come from very influential families and he thinks they could hurt him in the upcoming election. Suffice to say, he pays for it.
- Creator Cameo: Director Katt Shea shows up as the deputy DA in the scene where Eric and his father are looking to challenge the statutory rape charges Eric is facing.
- Cure Your Gays: Mark claims that Jesse scored a "conversion" by sleeping with Rachel, who had previously blown Mark off by claiming she was a lesbian. And he says it directly to Rachel's face.
- Death Seeker: It's hinted that Rachel may be this. After Lisa's suicide, she has a dream where she's the one who kills herself, and after being abandoned by her mother at the end, she loses all hope and tearfully prays for her own death.
- Dissonant Serenity: The first warning that Lisa's about to kill herself is how oddly happy she's acting, which Rachel doesn't realize until too late. She's also eerily composed in the moments right before she jumps.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Hate Sink Jerk Jocks (save for Jesse, of course) all shave their heads prior to the climax. Hmmm...
- Dolled-Up Installment: The film was originally written as The Curse, a movie that had no connection to Carrie in any form. It was retitled and rewritten to add a connection to Carrie, presumably because somebody pointed out the obvious similarities and decided that calling it a sequel would let it cash in on the success of the original (and help avoid accusations of plagiarism).
- Dramatic Irony: The viewer knows about the "game" from the start. While Rachel is obviously pissed about Eric's role in Lisa's suicide, she doesn't know exactly what was going on until the party, when the jocks show her their "scorebook" and even make fun of her death to Rachel's face.
- Driven to Suicide: Lisa kills herself at school after Eric dumps her.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Sue dies the moment she arrives at the party. The irony is that it was a complete accident on Rachel's part since she didn't know who was outside.
- Eye Scream: Rachel uses her powers to smash Monica's glasses and shove the broken glass into her eyes.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: A girl ends up dying this way by being cut by/crushed underneath it.
- False Friend: The jocks' female friends all befriend Rachel as a means of luring her into their prank, though Monica goes the furthest with her facade by "bonding" with Rachel at the mall.
- Final Boy: Jesse is the last person left alive to face Rachel. She saves him when she realizes that he truly did love her and had no part in the prank played on her.
- The Fundamentalist: Rachel's original mother is one of these, and she loses custody of her daughter and gets sent to an insane asylum in the first five minutes. She is possibly a deconstruction of Margaret White from the original, as Social Services would never let a woman so violently insane raise a child by herself.
- Gender Flip:
- Mark, Tracy, and Eric are a gender-flipped version of the original film's high school villains (Chris, Billy, and Norma). Mark is the ringleader of the plan to humiliate the protagonist and has a personal grudge against her (Chris), Tracy is Mark's equally nasty lover who goes along with the plan (Billy), and Eric is Mark's comparatively likable, yet still evil, best friend (Norma).
- Jesse also counts as a gender-flipped version of Sue, the popular kid who sympathizes with the put-upon heroine and tries to make amends for past jerkass behavior.
- Gone Horribly Right: The bullies wanted Rachel to think that Jesse, the one person keeping her from snapping, has betrayed her. They succeeded.
- Gorn: Compared to Carrie's rampage in the original, Rachel's killing spree is a complete bloodbath. Highlights include a dual impalement on a fire poker, CDs tossed like throwing stars, and a Groin Attack with a harpoon gun.
- Goth Girls Know Magic: A particularly notable example of this, given that, in the original 1976 film and the book it was based on, not only was Carrie White not a goth in the slightest, but her ultra-religious upbringing meant that she wore extremely modest, earth-colored clothes, with some of her tormentors (particularly the Greaser Delinquent Billy and his friends) wearing far more black than she did. Twenty years later, however, goths had become the stereotypical teen outcast (and associated with witchcraft and Psychic Powers, to boot), and so the new protagonist Rachel Lang was made a sexy goth chick.
- Goths Have It Hard: Rachel Lang is an unstable, depressed goth (although for good reason in mourning for her best friend Lisa, and fantasizes that it was her who died, shortly before murdering as many people as she can in a house fire.
- Groin Attack: Seconds after the Eye Scream moment described above, a blinded and dying Monica fires her spear gun into Eric's crotch, ripping his balls off and sending them into the pool.
- High School: Just like the last film, the main character and most of the supporting cast are all high school students.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Just when it seems Rachel's mother is going to comfort her injured daughter following her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, she slips right back into her religious zealotry and flees from Rachel, believing her to be possessed.
- Hope Spot:
- Sue realizes what is going to happen with Rachel and goes to stop the humiliation before it can end in another bloodbath. There's a chance she may succeed given her history with traumatized psychics and counselor training. Rachel ends up killing Sue the minute she arrives.
- Villainous example; when the rampage starts, Monica, Erik and Mark, the main instigators, have the sense to arm themselves. Mark even gets in a shot at Rachel, so that she falls into a swimming pool. She drowns him by taking advantage of him checking to see that she was dead, and trapped him using the pool cover.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Sue suffers this fate as she arrives at Mark's house and tries to get in, but Rachel throws a fire poker through the door, impaling her and Brad's heads who tries to escape.
- Important Haircut: Before the big game, the football team all shave their heads in an act of manliness. Jesse refuses to take part in it, symbolizing the divide between him and his teammates.
- Jerkass to One: Rachel is a nice girl for the most part, but becomes increasingly hostile toward Sue, as she believes Sue wants to have her put away because of her powers.
- Jerk Jock: With the exception of Jesse, the entire football team is a straight example, rating girls according to how hot they are and scoring points with each other for having sex with them.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: After Lisa's suicide, Eric at first seems appropriately remorseful for what happened, but it's only because he's afraid of facing the consequences for it. After he's let off the hook, his true colors come out, and he goes so far as to make fun of her to Rachel's face.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: The D.A. lets the boys off the hook for what is essentially statutory rape and harassment combined into one. He regrets it when their next victim murders them and burns them alive, while also committing suicide. This also leads to the death of a teacher who was involved in a similar mishap as a teenager. Safe to say, he won't be getting reelected.
- Karmic Death:
- Eric seduced and humiliated Lisa so eggregiously that she committed suicide. He dies when a harpoon to the nuts ends up castrating him.
- Likewise, Mark concocts a huge plan to humiliate Rachel for the crime of dating Jesse. When she starts on her rampage, he manages to shoot her with a flare gun but makes the mistake to go near the swimming pool where she fell rather than either run for it or prepare to shoot if she reappears. She leaves him to die under the pool cover, where he drowns.
- Kill It with Fire: Rachel dies after getting trapped in the burning mansion.
- Long-Lost Relative: Rachel turns out to be Carrie's half-sister, the two of them having both been fathered by Ralph White.
- The Lost Lenore: In the final scene, Jesse has a picture of Rachel on his desk and has adopted her dog. It's clear by the look on his face that he still misses her.
- Lovable Jock: Jesse rejects his teammates' boorish behavior, and develops genuine feelings for Rachel.
- Marked Change: After Rachel goes berserk, her tattoo of a thorny rose starts spreading itself all over her body, causing her to look as though she is covered in vines.
- Pass the Popcorn: A group of stoners sits outside the party in their truck, watching as Rachel burns the place down. One of them comments, "Dude, we're missing one killer party."
- Pom-Pom Girl: Downplayed. Head cheerleader Tracy may act encouraging and plucky during her cheer routine, but is an Alpha Bitch and Cruel Cheerleader the rest of the time. However, the other girls from the cheer practice at the beginning who make up her pyramid play the trope straighter, as they also take cheerleading seriously and aren't shown hanging out with the sociopathic popular clique.
- Psychic Powers: They're what make her a Person of Mass Destruction.
- Retcon: In the original book, Ralph White died in a construction accident in 1963 and Carrie's powers came from her mother's side of the family. In the 1976 film, it's revealed that Ralph left Margaret for another woman.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The Jerk Jock villains were based on an actual incident — specifically, that of the Spur Posse
, a group of athletes at a California high school who took their name from their leader's fandom of a player on the San Antonio Spurs. The Posse used a points system to keep track of and compare their sexual conquests amongst the group. Unlike this film's group of Asshole Victims, the Spur Posse were let off on charges of statutory rape and later had a run on the tabloid "trash TV" circuit afterwards. - Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Rachel in the end, following in the footsteps of her half-sister.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Rachel begins her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, you can see one of the extras fighting his way through the closing glass doors.
- Sequel: The Original Title: "The Rage" and then "Carrie", with a "2" thrown in for good measure.
- Sex Signals Death: Lisa has sex with Eric and is dumped, causing her to commit suicide due to feeling Defiled Forever. Rachel and Jesse having sex leads to everyone else's deaths, though Jesse himself survives.
- Shout-Out:
- Mark imitates Ghostface's voice from Scream (1996) when he prank calls Rachel.
- At the end of the film, Jesse is attending "Kings University".
- As noted on under Theme Naming, there are characters named Rachel, Monica, and Bing.
- The asylum Rachel's mother is at? Arkham. Could be a shout-out to either H. P. Lovecraft or Batman; either works.
- The orphaned but gentle and good-natured Rachel has a Shadow Archetype Evil Counterpart in the pampered and loved but spoiled and cunning Tracy. This seems like a reverse scenario of a character dynamic from a certain cult classic fighting game's third installment....
- Social Services Does Not Exist: Averted, unlike the original film. Not only does Social Services put Rachel in foster care the moment they find out how her mother is abusing her, they send her mother to a mental hospital as well.
- Sorry, I'm Gay: Mark’s attempts to bribe Rachel in order to get his hands on the pictures of him and Lisa, first with money and then with sex, don't go so well.Mark: How about I swing by when you get off work, I'll take you out for a little cruise? Come on, I don't bite. Unless you want me to.
Rachel: I don't think so.
Mark: Why not?
Rachel: 'Cause I'm a dyke. - Speak Ill of the Dead: Tracy dismisses Lisa's suicide, saying she "wasn't anybody", and at the party, Eric and the other jocks mock her death to Rachel's face.
- Starts with a Suicide: The film begins with Rachel's best friend Lisa jumping from the school rooftop after finding out that Eric, who she gave her virginity to, was only dating her for sex in order to score literal points with his buddies.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Sue Snell, a survivor from the original film, dies during this film's climax.
- Symbolic Glass House: The party happens in a glass house, where the glass walls are used to project the video of Rachel and Jesse having sex. It's also used for visual effect when Rachel shuts the doors telekinetically, but everyone can still be seen inside, struggling as they die.
- Theme Naming: Rachel, Monica, and Bing all share their names with characters from Friends.
- There Are No Therapists: Subverted. Sue Snell is one of the main characters and also a survivor from Carrie's rampage in the original, who works as a school counselor. She attempts to stop Rachel from doing the same thing Carrie did. She doesn't survive the sequel, though.
- Was It All a Lie?: Rachel to Jesse after finding out about The Game.Is that all I was to you, Jesse? Thirty points?
- Wild Teen Party: This replaces the prom from the original film as the location for the finalé.
- Would Hit a Girl: Rachel's adoptive father Boyd slaps her across the face after catching her sneaking into the house late after her date with Jesse. The football players also appeared ready to do harm to Rachel when they harass her at her house, with Eric appearing ready to beat her up while wearing brass knuckles had Rachel not used her powers to scare them off.
- Zen Survivor: Sue Snell, one of the few survivors of Carrie White's hellacious rampage, works as a school counselor. When she learns about Rachel's powers, she immediately steps in to try to help Rachel so she doesn't cause a similar catastrophe. She fails — and dies during Rachel's bloody rampage, to boot.
