Christine (1983) Review

Christine (1983) Review 

Christine is the story of an evil car, a red Plymouth Fury, with a mind of her own, and the ability to turn whoever owns her insane. It ends up in the possession of Arnie, a nerdy, awkward high schooler who falls in love with the car the moment he lays eyes on her, despite it being rundown and in an old auto wrecker yard. Arnie’s best friend Dennis doesn’t understand his obsession with the car, and it gets even weirder, when he rebuilds Christine from scratch and slowly sheds his nerdy demeanor in favour of a cocky loudmouth persona. Arnie asks out new-girl Leigh, who previously declined going out with Dennis, but she finds Arnie is becoming not just more interested in his car than her, but fully obsessed with the car. Together, Dennis and Leigh must try to save Arnie from the clutches of his maniacal machine. 

The premise of Christine sounds like it could be silly, and it kind of is, but it actually works. It starts out with Christine on the assembly line—the only red car out of dozens of white ones—and “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood playing, only to be abruptly cut off when Christine’s hood closes on a worker’s arm by itself. It’s established right away the car has a mind of its own, and something that doesn’t get explored is how exactly this works. Is it a supernatural kind of possession, or Terminator-like artificial intelligence? There’s no explanation given, which was a smart move (in the Stephen King novel upon which this is based, it seems apparent that it’s supernatural in nature) because knowing what makes her alive doesn’t really make it any scarier. 

Keith Gordon is great as Arnie, at first playing him as nerdy, but not like a super nerd, he’s still cool enough that you can buy Dennis (who’s a football player) being friends with him, and feel bad for him when bullies start picking on him in the mechanics shop at school. John Stockwell is okay as Dennis, but his character doesn’t get as much development as Arnie. For instance, there’s a part where Dennis takes Arnie home, then the camera follows Dennis driving back to his home, but then it cuts to the next day, so we never get to know what his home life is like. 

Both Arnie and Dennis go through transformations (Dennis’ less so than Arnie’s), with Dennis getting injured while playing football and being out of commission for a couple months, making him go from the role of more dominant “cool” friend to the more reserved one, and Arnie growing more of a backbone and not being pushed around as easily, but then he goes even further when Arnie just straight up gets creepy and becomes unhinged. After Dennis’ football accident, he disappears from the movie for a while, and this is another factor that made me feel he was less developed than Arnie.

There are some memorable side characters, including the main bully who pulls a switchblade on Arnie and Dennis in the shop at school, the weird old man who sells Christine to Arnie, and the grumpy guy who runs the garage where Arnie stores Christine, since his parents won’t let him keep it at their house. 

Then there’s the car, Christine. Her presence is actually often a frightening one. There’s an effect used when Christine repairs herself that’s really neat, and old-timey music is used several times to great results. Surprisingly, this movie is a slow-build, and there isn’t much car carnage until about half an hour in, but even then, it’s kept pretty minimal. Christine slowly gets revenge on the bullies that went after Arnie, and Dennis discovers her previous owner killed himself in her by carbon monoxide poisoning. I found it interesting the car was made to be female. This distinctly female character is, for all intents and purposes, a not often-seen female slasher villain: she’s a killer with a body count, and it’s pretty interesting to see the way she brings a boy into adulthood (Arnie) and totally takes over his life, and how that all unfolds.  

Christine was directed by John Carpenter, who also did the score, and this is definitely one of his more conservative movies. If you’re looking for fast-paced car murders, you’re not going to get it here. The premise is a little goofy when you think about it, and there are some questionable aspects, like how was Arnie able to rebuild Christine so fast and to such perfect working order when she was in such abysmal shape to start with? You could chalk it up to her supernatural nature, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. 

Christine is a reasonably suspenseful thriller that doesn’t rely on gore, but rather on building tension, and features interesting characters, both human and vehicle. It isn’t one of Carpenter’s all-time classics like The Thing or Halloween, but Carpenter fans and Stephen King fans should enjoy it.