Carrie (2013)

2013
Directed by Kimberly Peirce
Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Judy Greer, Portia Doubleday, Alex Russell, Gabriella Wilde, Ansel Elgort and Julianne Moore

First things first: I reviewed the original movie several years back on this here blog, in fact WAY back in April of 2010 for all three of you that are interested.  That was when I still had the "International Horror Registry" thing going on, meaning that I consider that flick to be one of the best horror movies...ever.  Worthy of ellipses because reasons.  Anyway, I didn't go back and reread that review, but I'm almost certain that I probably mentioned that it was one of many scary flicks that I saw for the first time on MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs.  I remember that night well.  The buildup, the awesome Brian De Palma camerawork during the prom scene, the multiple simultaneous shots as "They're all gonna laugh at you!" echoes on the soundtrack.  It was one of the few movies that actually left me a little disturbed when I went to sleep afterward.

A few months after that, I got around to reading the book.  Now, I've read a good portion of Stephen King's novels (well, up until a certain point - 1998 or so would be the cutoff), but the O.G. printed version of Carrie is actually one of his lesser works.  Which makes sense, considering it was his first published novel.  The awesome story is there, but the format is just weird.  It's told in a mix of traditional third-person narrative and Bram Stoker's Dracula-style newspaper clippings and journal writings.  And it doesn't really work.  So go figure that when a TV-movie remake came out in 2002 with Angela Bettis, they were MUCH more faithful to this book...and boy did that movie suck.  Ellipses because of suckiness.  Well, when the news filtered out in 2011 that they were AGAIN remaking this story for modern audiences, I wasn't too thrilled, to the point that I didn't see this movie until literally a week before I write this.  And while audiences generally liked this film, I was decidedly less than wowed despite an admittedly star-studded cast for a horror film.  Enough jibber jabber.  Let's get to it.

Alright kids, you want to know the point that I decided to give this movie a negative review?  When a YouTube video figures prominently into the plot.  Spoiler alert.  For the uninitiated, Carrie is the story of the titular character, an unpopular high school girl who deals with the horrors of bullying on a daily basis.  This is shown, in every version of the story that has ever been done, very early on in the story when she is in the shower after gym class and has her first menstrual period - something that she actually has no knowledge about, and thus freaks the hell out.  It used to be that the girls threw tampons at her while laughing and name-calling, but in this film...yeah, YouTube video.  Ellipses because YouTube video. 

Chloe Grace Moretz drew the honors of playing Carrie White in this film ahead of many competitors (including MEGAN FOX of all people, because nothing says "unpopular, tormented high school girl" like one of the most smoking hot chicks on the planet), and while she's nowhere near as effective as Sissy Spacek she does an admirable enough job in the role.  Compare her to the actress who plays her mother.  See, Carrie deals with bullying not only from her classmates but from her overly religious mother.  Piper Laurie's performance in the original is a thing of beauty; she was scary without ever being over-the-top.  Well, now we get Julianne Moore.  And while a lot of other reviewers pour on the raves over Moore in this flick, I thought she was over-the-top to the point of being laughable.  Those scenes that Carrie and her Momma share in this film have nowhere near the power of the similar stuff in the 1976 original.  It's glandular.

The rest of the plot pretty much spins along just the way it has so many times before.  Sue Snell (Gariella Wilde) feels terrible about her role in the shower incident, and asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) to take Carrie to the prom.  Only some of the other girls aren't taking too kindly to the boot camp-esque detention that they were sentenced to.  Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday) and Billy Nolan (Alex Russell) capture a pig, kill it and plan to dump its blood on Carrie at the prom, and unfortunately this is another instant where the movie flies off the rails.  Doubleday and Russell did fine with what they were scripted to do, but much like Moore, the characters were just handled in such a ham-fisted way that made me want them wiped off the screen.  And not in the good horror movie "heel heat" way, either. 

Everything builds up to the stuff at the prom, as Carrie (of course) turns out to be beautiful and Tommy gradually begins to enjoy the company of this girl that he didn't really want to be with.  And then comes the pig's blood, and everything that comes after.  I also hasten to mention that Carrie has been doing all kinds of research about the power that she possesses, something that has caused all kinds of further riffs with her mother in the process, adding that little extra layer of emotional weight that really hit you in the gut in the Spacek-De Palma masterpiece but falls kind of flat here.  However, the prom scene in this movie is AWESOME.  Dark, bloody and protracted, it was purely and simply awesome.  They got that aspect of it right.  But then there's a weird twist involving Sue's character that felt really out of place.  I'll leave that up for you to decipher.  Or look up on Wikipedia, whichever method you prefer.

I'm well aware that my plot description here wasn't the greatest, but I'm operating under the assumption that almost everyone reading this is more than familiar with the story of Carrie.  It really is a great one.  It's not an out-and-out HORROR film, although it definitely has lots of death and destruction.  It's more of a tragedy.  To be fair, everyone involved in this movie seemed to view it as such and take it seriously regardless of whether or not I liked them in their roles.  Moretz, again, was really good and sympathetic in the main role and deserved most of the praise.  Gabriella Wilde was also really good as Sue Snell, along with Ansel Elgort as Tommy, a guy that I really wish would get looks for things other than teen drippy roles.  It's artfully directed by Kimberly Peirce, with a script that only treads into truly dopey territory with the YouTube stuff.

The problem with the movie comes up every time we see someone that we're not supposed to like.  It starts with Julianne Moore and her Bible-smacking ways, but it manifests itself every time Chris and her bully brethren are onscreen.  I don't know what it is about the portrayal of bullying in modern films, but in the olden times (like...1998 and before) film-makers and screenwriters used to be really good at getting these scenes to come off as cruel and emotional.  Nowadays, you can just feel how hard they're trying to hammer home the "don't bully" message and make these characters SO cartoony that they're unbelievable.  That definitely manifests itself here.  There's also nothing as memorable as "They're all gonna laugh at you"/four simultaneous camera shots of death.  So that's -2 points on the cool meter.  Overall, though, it's just a story that was done perfectly the first time around in 1976.  In this reporter's opinion, it was done even BETTER than the novel.  So why bother?  Because we signed Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore, that's why.

Time for my most unpopular rating in a while.  ** out of ****.  There's still no topping Sissy Spacek.  Still, this movie was definitely better than the 2002 TV movie - and The Rage: Carrie 2.  Shudder.  And that is it for RemakeUAry!  Valentine's Day approaches next month, and as such we'll be looking at some very fitting films...