Why Carrie is the best horror movie to watch at Halloween

In the new horror film Prevenge, British actress Alice Lowe plays a pregnant woman who exacts revenge on the people she believes were responsible for the death of her baby’s father. Lowe also wrote and directed the film — which played at the recent Toronto Film Festival — all while heavily pregnant herself. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, what am I doing, taking this on?'” says the actress, best known for starring in Ben Wheatley’s 2012 film, Sightseers. “I had wanted to direct for a long time but I had no intention to direct pregnant. [Laughs]. That was not my intention: ‘Yeah, I’m going to do my debut feature, and there’s not enough challenges, I need to be pregnant as well!”

Lowe is a huge horror movie fan, who is drawn to family-oriented terror tales with female protagonists, like Rosemary’s Baby or Brian De Palma’s 1976 Stephen King adaptation, Carrie, which stars Sissy Spacek as an unpopular high school student who develops telekinetic powers.

“I think everyone identifies with her character,” says the actress. “I really like the idea of an underdog character going through this transformation where they take power. I also think the reason it’s so rewatchable is, every time you watch it, you are hoping there’s a different ending, you’re really hoping that she just kisses the boy, and is the pageant queen, or whatever. It just doesn’t work that way. I think it’s unique. She is the killer but she has our sympathy. She is also a victim to her mother’s insanity. It’s like a female Psycho in some ways. I love Brian De Palma, I love color in film. That was one of the things that I really wanted to do with Prevenge, was make sure it was an assault of the sense, that it’s about color and vividness — rather than the passion at the moment for sort of grey-blue-black horror. That was, for me, the experience of pregnancy, that it’s kind of a vivid experience. It’s not at all about pastel pinks. It’s all about bright, intense experiences, and revulsions, and strange shifts in your emotions.”

Scream Factory is releasing a 40th anniversary collector’s edition Blu-ray of Carrie on Oct. 11, which is now available to pre-order. You can see the trailer for that two-disc set and a clip from Prevenge, below.