There's an ecstatic element in Brian De Palma's new thriller The Fury: he seems to extend the effects he's playing with about as far as he can without losing control. This inferno comedy is perched right on the edge. It may be to De Palma what The Wild Bunch was to Peckinpah. You feel he never has to make another horror movie. To go on would mean trying to kill people in ever more photogenically horrific ways, and he's already got two killings in The Fury which go so far beyond anything in his last film, Carrie, that that now seems like child's play. There's a potency about the murders here—as if De Palma were competing with himself, saying "You thought Carrie was frightening? Look at this!" He's not a great storyteller; he's careless about giving the audience its bearings. But De Palma is one of the...