Question: Is it me, or is Carrie's mother smiling when she gets stabbed multiple times by Carrie?
Answer: She was also crucified, which makes her feel connected to Jesus.
Answer: I think for somebody as repressed as Carrie's mother even something like physical pain is a kind of release (her moans sound sexual to me). Also, remember the mother talking about enjoying Carrie's father touching her? "Hands all over me", there could be a parallel there.
I agree – it almost seemed like she was having an orgasm, or close to it, during her death throes.
Question: Why did they change her name from Rita Desjardin, in the book, to Miss Collins?
Answer: The only answer I could find online was that it was changed simply because "Miss Collins" was easier to pronounce/remember. It's also worth noting that it's really not all that uncommon for movie adaptations to alter and rename characters. Especially supporting characters. Given there are some other changes to the character in the movie, renaming her could have also been a way to distance her more from the character in the original book.
Question: Why do Chris and her friends bully Carrie? She's never done anything to them and I've read the book which also provides no answers.
Answer: Bullying doesn't have anything to do with whether or not someone did anything to someone else. Bullies zero in on people they know are emotionally weaker and less able to defend themselves. Carrie was extremely shy, awkward, naive, etc. These are traits that bullies tend to exploit for their own amusement and to make themselves feel superior.
Question: I believe that Carrie did not actually die at the end of the film and is waiting to torment Sue and whoever else messes with her. Anyone adhere to this?
Answer: That was always the impression I got until the sequel was released in 1999 (The Rage: Carrie 2) that made it clear Carrie White was definitively dead.
So her grabbing her arm, what was the purpose for that?
It was a nightmare, never happened, it was just Sue's imagination.
Answer: Her grabbing her arm was a guilt ridden nightmare that Sue had.
Question: Carrie is seen crying after she realizes that Tommy is dead. I can only assume that she actually cared about him but she still believes he was good and didn't take part in the prank, right? And at the end does she actually care about Sue and forgive her?
Answer: Since blood was dumped on him too she must have realized that he wasn't a part of it, so yes, she cared for him. In the book when Carrie touches Sue, they link minds and Carrie sees that Sue felt bad about teasing her and was trying to do something nice to atone, and had nothing to do with Chris' nasty prank. So yes it's safe to say she grieved for Tommy and forgave Sue.
Answer: In this version, Carrie never weeps for Tommy's death, and it's never indicated whether or not she was even aware that he died. And she never directly encounters Sue in this version, so we don't know her thoughts about her either. The film was likely trying to leave some things open-ended, so that audiences could interpret them as they wanted.
Question: Why exactly did Carrie's house collapse at the end? I thought it could be old age, Carrie's powers or the fire, does anyone know?
Answer: The whole idea of the movie and the book is that Carrie is an innocent, harmless young girl with unusual powers, driven over the edge by the cruelties she endures on a daily basis, while her mother is completely insane and uses a warped form of Christianity as an outlet for her madness. In fact, most of Margaret White's supposed "quotes" from the Bible are made up by her. The original answer is correct: Carrie's powers cause the house to collapse.
Answer: We actually just talked about this in my film class, and the consensus was that her surging powers began the house's collapse, and she felt so guilty about killing her mother that she brought the house down so that they would both be dead in it together.
Answer: I perceive it as Carrie's mother was truly the foundation of good and Carrie was possessed by evil. Once her mother was dead the foundation of good was gone and evil was able to take over completely. This explains Carrie's fear as she no longer had any good.
Question: In the beginning of the movie after Carrie goes home after starting her period, her mother starts reading from something about God cursing Eve with blood and the first sin was intercourse. Does anybody know what she was reading from? I can't find it in the Bible, and it doesn't look like that's the kind of book she was holding.
Answer: It seems completely made up for the movie, especially the line "the raven was called sin." In the movie she's holding what looks to be a religious pamphlet, but it's not anything from a real book. In the remake of the film, after her mother says "the curse was the curse of blood", Carrie adds "that's not even in the Bible."
Answer: I took it to be a reference to the Serpent Seed doctrine. Proponents of the Serpent Seed doctrine believe that the Hebrew and Greek words for "deceived" when describing the story of the first sin actually literally translate to "wholly seduce" (They don't). The doctrine goes that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was actually Satan himself, and that "eating the forbidden fruit" is actually a metaphor for having sex with Satan. The doctrine continues with the claim that Eve's son Cain was actually the spawn of Satan, and that descendants of Cain actually survived the Great Flood and are still among us to this day. The Serpent Seed doctrine has been debunked by many scholars, and there is no evidence from the text of the Bible that it is true, but there are still a lot of religious extremists that believe it.
Question: What is written on the back of Norma's shirt when she brings the attendance slips to Ms Collins?
Answer: It's either cycnus X*1, or cygnus X*1. I have no idea what that references, but according to Google, cygnus X-1 relates to a black hole. An in-joke maybe, or simply a coincidence, since quirky-lettering shirts were fairly standard in the 70s.
Answer: It's unknown what happens to Mrs. White but, at the end of the novel, a woman says that her daughter has been showing telekinetic abilities and is actually very accepting of this. This implies that Carrie had been reincarnated and been born into a more loving family.
Answer: My feeling is that being so fundamentally religious that she was almost happy to finally die, and meet God as she believed.