20 Movies You Weren't Expecting To Make You Cry
2. Carrie
Many watching Carrie for the first time will probably go in expecting an angry, cathartic high school revenge movie, and those people will be caught off guard and left in pieces by the end.
There is nothing cathartic about Carrie. It's one of the saddest horror movies of all time, a supernatural revenge tragedy in which nearly everyone dies and in which the titular character (Sissy Spacek) is subjected to the cruellest treatment by almost every other character, including her own mother. Well, one student (Amy Irving) does try to perform an act of kindness by getting Carrie invited to the prom... and this well-intentioned act leads to the film's infamous prom massacre, making it all even more depressing.
Carrie's heartbreakingly tragic story and the overwhelming pathos running through the whole thing - much of which comes from Sissy Spacek's practically perfect performance in the lead role - make this a sobering, shattering piece of cinema. It's the kind of picture that'd be hard to rewatch often, brilliant though it is.