CLASSIC CARRIE RISES AGAIN WITH UPDATED SPECIAL EFFECTS
Teens and Mom still just as mean
The new Carrie is very much like the old one, which presents problems for those familiar with the 1976 original. If you liked it, there’s not much reason to see this one, too.
If you didn’t like it, you certainly don’t want to see it again. How come they even shot the new film? Don’t ask; there’s no why in remake.
For those new to the story, Carrie is a chilling mix of puberty, bullying, bad parenting and out-of-control telekinesis.
The original is still a better movie. Chloë Grace Moretz in the title role is not on par with young Sissy Spacek. Most of her performance is put into her hunched shoulders, which really only works if you’re playing Richard III.
On the other hand, Julianne Moore is far more effective as her religious-nut mother, so that almost evens the score.
Carrie White has a nasty, brutish life. At home, her mom berates her for alleged immodesty, lustful thoughts and other sins, and regularly locks her in a closet so she can beg God for forgiveness.
Mrs. White seems to have internalized every bad thing the Bible says about women, and made up a few choice items of her own. The house itself groans and creaks as though haunted.
At school, Carrie’s an outcast, but things come to a head when she gets her first period in the shower after gym. Unaware of what it is, she thinks she’s dying.
The other girls mock her and, in a rare modification of the original plot, make a video of the event and post it on YouTube.
Apparently, Carrie’s telekinetic powers are awakened at the same time. At first they have little focus — when she gets angry, glass breaks and lights dim — but soon she’s studying the phenomenon and learning to control it. If this were a different story, she’d probably head off and join the X-Men.
Alas, this is a Stephen King novel, adapted by Lawrence D. Cohen (who also took a stab at making a Broadway musical out of it) and by Roberto AguirreSacasa.
Taking over the director’s chair from Brian De Palma is Kimberly Peirce, still best known for 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, another story of an adolescent having a hard time fitting in.
Carrie is not without allies. Judy Greer plays Ms. Desjardin, a sympathetic gym teacher but an anachronistic one, given that her role is lifted wholesale from the original movie.
Gabrielle Wilde and Ansel Elgort are girlfriend and boyfriend Sue and Tommy, who feel so bad about Carrie’s hazing that they arrange for him to take her to the prom.
Then there’s Portia Doubleday and Alex Russell as Chris and Billy, who have such a dislike of Carrie that they go to the trouble of slaughtering a pig so they can douse her with a bucket of blood. (And you thought today’s teenagers were lazy!)
If some of the character names seem a little dated, it’s because they, too, come from the first movie. Interestingly, when King’s novel was published in 1974, Carrie was one of the more popular names for girls in the U.S. It peaked at No. 28 in 1976 and has been falling ever since, perhaps indicative of the power of the film, which earned a respectable $33 million that year.
Whether the new Carrie gains the same traction is less certain. The special effects are obviously more impressive, but there’s little else to lift this one above the original, and as good as Moore is, it’s a shame she didn’t get to reiterate the line: “Pimples are the Lord’s way of chastising you.”
Ideally they would have remade Carrie as Hannah, Samantha or Victoria, and then seen what effect the film had on that name in years to come. Box office be damned; the true measure of a horror movie’s success is measured in birth certificates. 1976 was also the year of The Omen, and Damian, never the most popular name to begin with, took 15 years to recover from that one.