The Rage: Carrie 2

Originally titled The Curse, the film was not developed as a sequel to the 1976 film adaptation and began as an original story.[4][5] Production was initially scheduled to start in 1996 with Emily Bergl in the lead role; however, production stalled for two years, and the plot was retooled as a Carrie sequel.[6] The plot involving the high school jocks who use a point system to rate their sexual conquests is inspired from a real-life 1993 sex scandal involving a group known as the Spur Posse.[7][5] The film went into production in 1998 under the title Carrie 2: Say You're Sorry.

A few weeks into production, director Robert Mandel quit over creative differences and Katt Shea took over the reins with less than a week to prepare to start filming, and two weeks' worth of footage to reshoot.[8] Portions of the film were filmed in a North Carolina house designed by the iconic architect Gene Leedy.[9]

Amy Irving reprised the role of Sue Snell, which she originated in the first Carrie, though she was initially wary of taking the role and asked Brian De Palma, director of the original film, for his blessing.[10] Director Shea was told that she would not be able to use footage of Sissy Spacek from the original Carrie, but she edited several scenes into the film and presented the film to Spacek, who granted permission for her likeness to be used.[9]

The Rage: Carrie 2, was released on March 12, 1999. It opened in second place that weekend but was not successful.[11] It grossed a total of $17,762,705 domestically against a $21 million budget, making the film a box office disappointment.[1]

The film was released on VHS and DVD on October 12, 1999, and Laserdisc on November 9.[12] A Blu-ray version of the film was released on April 14, 2015, in a double feature with the 2002 TV version of Carrie from Scream Factory.[13] This edition went out of print in October 2019.[14]

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."[15] On Metacritic, it had a rating of 42 on a scale from 0–100 based on 21 reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews.[16]

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.[17] 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."[18] 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.[17][18] 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.[19]

Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a more favorable B-minus rating.[20] 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."[20] 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".[21]

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."[22]

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.[23][5]