De Palma sets us up with a cinematic technique in the same way Hitchcock sets us up for the shower scene in Psycho, with the rainstorm, the gothic setting, and the kinky motel manager with his stuffed animals, all of which play on negative predispositions in the audience's minds. In both cases, the directors have shown an awareness that the deepest impression comes not from the jolting, unprepared violence found in B-horror flicks, but from modulated variations, as extreme as some may be, which are all threads of a single fabric.

De Palma fits Carrie's finale into the film very much the way a composer would close a musical composition, by reusing a "progression" that has been solidly established within the artistic structure. Each of the film's three climactic scenes—the locker room sequence leading up to Carrie's first menstruation; the sequence where Carrie and Tommy Ross...