Carrie is a remake based on a Stephen King novel, directed by Kimberly Peirce and starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde and Ansel Elgort.
I’ve lost interest in remakes to such a massive degree that I didn’t even know that this one existed. It was only that my girlfriend hired this one for us to watch one Friday night that it even came to my attention, otherwise I probably would never have even been aware of it.
The original Carrie was quite shocking for its day. This remake tries to up the ante, blood-wise, which is not a bad thing but it never really succeeds in being as creepily effective as the Sissy Spacek version. It’s not a bad film though. I particularly liked the opening. Julianne Moore is a fine actress, and she plays Carrie’s religious fanatic mother. She’s great in the opening scene that sees her torn between a motherly instinct and…plunging a giant pair of scissors into a newborn. Christian fundamentalist bullshit scares me more than horror films ever could, so I found most of the scenes with Carrie’s mother quite disturbing.
The performances are actually all quite good. As good as Julianne Moore is, my favourite though was probably Carrie’s bully, Chris (Portia Doubleday). She pulls off the sociopath thing so believably I have to wonder what she’s like in real life. The character is well written and relatable, I mean every high school in the world has a girl like this lurking just a few lockers away down the hall poised to start screaming and tearing other people’s hair out when she doesn’t get her way.
And Chloe Moretz is good as Carrie, but I had one problem with her. She’s too pretty. The original Carrie character worked so well because Sissy Spacek was ‘girl next door’. She wasn’t one of the ‘beautiful people’ at her school. It’s a minor issue yeah, but I just had trouble believing a girl that good looking would struggle to get a date to the prom.
I was also really impressed with Ansel Elgort as Tommy, the hapless jock who is talked into taking Carrie to the prom. He’s not a bad actor. As long as he stays away from the personal trainers and grilled chicken, I think he’ll turn out some pretty decent performances. In this film, he’s a genuinely nice guy. I kept waiting for him to do something bastardly, but he’s a gentleman all the way. It made me all the more sympathetic to his demise – he gets clocked in the head with the blood bucket and this, for some weird reason, kills him. I can’t remember if this was in the original, but it’s both pathetic and hilarious.
Anyway, Carrie’s revenge scene is just as satisfying in this version as in the original. You know you shouldn’t be cheering for her (she’s basically slaughtering a room full of innocent people) but you can’t help but relish in the moment as much as she does. Points to Moretz’s performance for that. She doesn’t quite cackle like a witch, but it’s definitely in her eyes.
And the events leading up to it are actually very well directed – the scenes of Carrie making her own dress for the prom, and waiting for her date, are really well done and make the ‘you know it’s coming’ bucket of blood moment all the more effective.
The ending is cheap and predictable (can I even use that term when talking about a remake?) but considering what’s come before it, it actually works. This film has renewed my faith that remakes of classic horror films can actually be worth checking out. 100 minutes well spent.
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