Not so much a sequel as a remake, Rage has troubled teenager Rachel (Bergl) living with foster parents and discovering that things have a tendency to fly around when she has a strop. When her best pal falls victim to a game played by the school jocks - they shag the girls, rate them out of ten and dump them - and throws herself off the school roof, Rachel's powers intensify.
Luckily, nice jock Jesse (London, slightly chunkier twin of Party Of Five's Jeremy) falls for her and takes her under his wing, thus pissing off the cheerleading set who prepare a surprise for Rachel at a post-game party.
There are some good things in this: Bergl and London are a sweet couple, and in a pair of scenes suggest they might even be able to act, while the bloody pyrotechnics include a couple of innovations, particularly a sequence in which piggy-faced jock Eric (Zachery Ty Bryan of Home Improvement fame) has his undercarriage shot off with a spear gun.
Amy Irving crops up as the inevitable, 'Was in the original, you know,' cameo, playing a school counsellor. But the major problem is that this has to measure up to one of the finest horror movies of all time, a burden made all the heavier thanks to the hokey device of flashbacks to the original movie - frankly, you're just reminded of why you'd rather be watching Sissy Spacek.
Rage is also somewhat condescending to the girls, unusual since it is directed by a woman - after all, being reviewed and rated by the football team may be unpleasant, but a slap across the mush and some in-depth reviewing of the jock's own performance is a more appropriate, and likely, response than doing oneself in.
It would have been interesting to see what Shea and writer Rafael Moreu could have come up with if they hadn't been tied to the Carrie title; there are worse crap horror films around, but none that so flagrantly invite comparisons to one so good.