Introduction: Rage, but Make It Discounted
Some sequels are destined to fail. Jaws: The Revenge. Exorcist II: The Heretic. Speed 2: Cruise Control. Into this pantheon of cinematic shame proudly wobbles The Rage: Carrie 2. Released in 1999, this was Hollywood’s attempt to cash in on the late ’90s teen-horror revival (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) while dragging Stephen King’s classic into the mix like a corpse at a frat party.
Directed by Katt Shea (after Robert Mandel bailed a week into production—smart man), Carrie 2 introduces Rachel Lang, Carrie White’s half-sister, because apparently telekinesis is hereditary, like asthma or bad credit. What follows is 104 minutes of recycled plot beats, pseudo-feminist rage, and more football jocks than a Gatorade commercial.
The Setup: Telekinesis, Trauma, and Terrible Writing
We open with Rachel as a child, watched by her mother Barbara, who immediately declares her “possessed.” Instead of, say, supporting her daughter through this “oops, I moved a spoon with my mind” phase, Barbara is institutionalized, leaving Rachel to rot in foster care. Fast forward ten years: Rachel is a pale, angsty outcast whose only friend, Lisa, is seduced and discarded by Eric, a football player so sleazy you want to disinfect your screen.
Lisa promptly commits suicide by leaping off the school roof—because nothing says “we care about teen trauma” like using it as a plot device to get to the telekinesis. Rachel, devastated, discovers Lisa’s affair with Eric and becomes a target for the entire jock squad. Cue ominous music, camera zooms, and Amy Irving cashing a paycheck to reprise her role as Sue Snell, the only survivor from the original Carrie.
Déjà Vu: Because Why Write a New Story?
If you think you’ve seen this before, congratulations—you watched the original Carrie. Instead of prom humiliation, it’s a videotaped sex tape projected at a house party. Instead of a bucket of pig’s blood, we get Rachel’s “name on a conquest list.” Instead of Carrie’s crucifixion mom, we get Rachel’s schizophrenic mother, who alternates between vacant stares and shouting Bible-lite nonsense.
It’s the same structure, but with late-’90s flavor: grunge fashion, angsty eyeliner, and football bros who make the bullies from The Breakfast Club look like humanitarians.
The Villains: Jocks, Jerks, and Justice Systems
The antagonists here are the football team, who treat statutory rape like a game of fantasy football. Eric, Mark, Chuck, Brad—their names sound like a rejected boy band, but their crimes are genuinely vile. The movie almost stumbles onto a serious theme—rape culture, toxic masculinity, institutional cover-ups—but then drowns it in melodrama and bad one-liners.
The district attorney literally waves away statutory rape charges because “boys will be boys.” Subtle, this movie is not. If the message weren’t clear enough, every male jock is painted as a walking, talking red flag until Rachel turns them into walking, talking corpses.
The Heroine: Rachel Lang, Dollar-Store Carrie
Emily Bergl, bless her, does her best. She brings some emotional depth to Rachel, who’s part goth, part Final Girl, and part “I accidentally broke a snow globe with my brain.” But the script gives her nothing except angst, a basset hound named Walter, and the world’s most predictable arc: sad, bullied girl meets nice jock, gets humiliated, explodes into psychic murder.
Her romance with Jesse, the “good jock,” is as believable as a Hallmark Christmas movie. He’s kind, gentle, and somehow immune to the toxic culture that saturates his team. Translation: he’s a fantasy conjured by screenwriters who needed at least one man not to die.
The Death Scenes: Rage in Technicolor
Let’s be honest—the only reason anyone watches a Carrie sequel is for the meltdown massacre. And here, at least, the film delivers something.
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Glasses implode into Monica’s eyes. Stylish, if unnecessarily cruel.
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Eric, the slimeball, is castrated by a harpoon gun. Subtlety is dead, long live symbolism.
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A pool party becomes a watery grave when Rachel locks the cover and lets Mark drown like a frat rat in a keg.
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Tracy, the jealous cheerleader, gets squashed by falling debris. Oops.
It’s bloody, over-the-top, and strangely satisfying—but it never matches the operatic, iconic chaos of Carrie’s prom. Instead of a fiery inferno of religious imagery and despair, we get a series of Rube Goldberg kills that feel like they wandered in from Final Destination.
The Adults: Useless at Best, Dead at Worst
Amy Irving returns as Sue Snell, the one survivor of the original massacre. She exists solely to point at Rachel and shout, “She’s like Carrie!” before promptly getting killed by a flying fire poker. Nice legacy, Sue—you lived through the first movie just to be skewered like a cocktail olive in the sequel.
Rachel’s mother, Barbara, pops up occasionally to rant about demons, but her schizophrenia is handled with the nuance of a sledgehammer. By the end, she flees the carnage screaming about possession. Subtlety, again, was left on the cutting-room floor.
The Ending: Tragedy, Romance, and Burning Awkwardness
In the grand tradition of horror sequels, the ending is a mess. Rachel unleashes her powers, kills most of the cast, then has a tragic balcony moment with Jesse. She realizes—via videotape, because 1999 loved its VHS symbolism—that Jesse actually loved her. Instead of letting this relationship blossom, she collapses under debris and burns to death, flinging Jesse to safety.
One year later, Jesse is in college, walking his basset hound, and dreaming about kissing Rachel before she shatters into pieces. That’s not horror—that’s a rejected ending from Dawson’s Creek: The Paranormal Years.
The Themes: Rage Against the Machine (But Badly)
To its credit, the movie tries. It tackles rape culture, systemic corruption, and the way young women are discarded by society. But instead of weaving these themes into a compelling story, it smashes them together like bumper cars and hopes the message sticks.
The result? A film that thinks it’s feminist but often feels exploitative, thinks it’s tragic but often feels melodramatic, and thinks it’s scary but mostly feels like a made-for-TV after-school special with gore.
The Legacy: Better Forgotten, Like a Bad Yearbook Photo
The Rage: Carrie 2 bombed at the box office, grossing less than its budget. Critics shredded it, fans ignored it, and Stephen King quietly looked the other way. Today, it’s remembered mostly as a cautionary tale about unnecessary sequels. Emily Bergl deserved better. Amy Irving definitely deserved better. Walter the basset hound deserved an Oscar.
Final Verdict: Carrie, Lite and Lukewarm
If the original Carrie is a five-course gothic tragedy, The Rage: Carrie 2 is the microwaved leftovers: limp, soggy, and likely to give you indigestion. It’s not scary, not clever, and only occasionally entertaining when the body count rises.
Verdict: Watch the original. Skip this one. Or better yet, stare into a mirror and whisper “They made a Carrie sequel” until your reflection laughs at you. That’ll be scarier than anything in this movie.
