Let’s be honest, a remake of Carrie in the year 2013 wasn’t necessary. But Hollywood’s running dry on original ideas that are guaranteed profit margins, so they prefer to stick to the formulas that work. Remakes of familiar tales targeted to a young audience.
If you’re going to force a remake of a beloved 1975 horror classic that’s based off a Stephen King novel, you better make sure you do it right. Kimberly Peirce, director of Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss was brought in behind the lens, while Lawrence D. Cohen, the screenwriter of the original Carrie was brought in to co-write the film with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.
You all know the story. Young Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz) is the awkward teenager who has no friends in school, constantly getting teased and tormented by her peers. It’s not her fault. The tough awkward upbringing by her overly Christian mother Margaret (Julianne Moore) has caused more harm than good forcing her overdone religious beliefs upon her child, making her child into a social outcast.
The only thing is, Carrie possesses the special power of telekinesis. She slowly learns of these powers as the bullying from her peers gets worse, especially by the disturbingly mean Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday). Her powers slowly get stronger as she gets angry, and once she discovers that she has them, she’s able to hone in on them and become dangerously powerful to those who do her wrong.
Sacasa and Cohen remold the script to modern times. The bullying that Carrie encountered in 1976 is of course, just as relevant today, if not more so, thanks to the technology of YouTube and Facebook. Chris Hargensen and her friends, which include Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) don’t hesitate to make fun of Carrie in the locker room after she experiences her first period in the shower after gym class, taking it as far as to throwing tampons at her, and recorded all of it on their iPhones. Hargensen is cold and reckless, but in this version there’s an even more prominent focus on the role of Sue Snell. She’s a girl whose heart is in the right place, but who is a typical follower, doing as the rest of her students do, even if she knows its not right. They revisit the plot where Snell asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) to take her to prom in order to make what the girls did right to Carrie, to give her one memorable night. This pleases gym coach Ms. Desjardin (Judy Greer) who keeps a watchful eye on Carrie, after the sickening act that the girls commit. Of course, Carrie’s mother doesn’t want Carrie going to the prom, and tries to force her not to go. Only Carrie’s telepathic skills allow her mom with no alternative.
Moretz and Moore deliver their typically strong performances, even if the film doesn’t really do them justice. Moretz plays the lost and nervous Carrie pretty well, and Moore is in her wheelhouse as the overly protective old school Christian. Wilde, Elgort and Greer are fine as well. But the film mostly feels as a made-for-TV horror adaptation of Carrie made by MTV.
The plot is familiar, but the film feels foreign to the original. The slow-building spooky nature which made the original so chilling, is absent here. Peirce’s vision is too modern for her own good. The soundtrack includes songs from Vampire Weekend and Portugal. The Man, two of my favorite acts, that feel really out of place and lost in what’s supposed to be a chilling horror film.
The buildup to the climatic prom scene is a disappointment, as is the scene itself. If there was anything that the film needed to get right, it was this. It earns its R rating in terms of gore, but the chilling horror tension of the original isn’t anywhere to be found. It was a disappointing scene that just didn’t deliver the goods.
There’s just too much going on in the film, as they try to give equally prominent roles to all the characters. Sue Snell and Chris Hargensen’s roles are far more than I remembered them being, and although it doesn’t always work, it made them more fleshed out characters than they were in the original. Elgort gives Tommy a great bit of charm and personality that felt right as well. With that said, there needed to be more focus on Carrie and the relationship with her mother, which I felt wasn’t quite as effective as it needed to be.
There were moments of hope for this remake, and they really could have found ways to make it stand out from the original while also creating its own identity. But it just feels lost and confused, never finding a formula or beat that was true to itself. It’s also void of any chilling tension or scares making it a pale remake that will soon be forgotten.
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