Carrie (2013)

3 Stars (out of four)

Okay, I have to admit, I was surprised by this one.  Kimberly Pierce's take on one of the greatest horror movies ever made, Carrie, by one of the greatest directors ever, Brian DePalma, is no easy task.  It has huge shoes to fill, ones I thought would be impossible to fill.  When it comes to movies, I like being proved wrong and surprised.  I'm not exactly why it took so long to be released.  As you can see from the original poster, it was supposed to come out 7 months ago.  Usually that is a very bad sign when a movie is delayed that long, usually due to post-production tinkering because it wasn't playing well.  Whatever the case, the extra time served it well.  Unlike the horrible and depressingly long line of pale imitators that came before this one, Kimberly Pierce's Carrie, like Rob Zombie's Halloween, is a superlative remake.

The plot is exactly the same.  Carrie White (played by Chlöe Moretz-Hit Girl from Kick Ass), a pitifully shy and timid girl, has her first period in gym class and is mercilessly taunted and bullied by the popular girls in school.  Unfortunately for her, Carrie does not understand what is happening to her because her domineering and fanatical mother (Julianne Moore, playing at her unhinged best) didn't explain the facts of life to her.  What Carrie begins to understand as well is that she is a telekinetic, she can move objects with her mind.  The girls are punished for being so cruel to Carrie, with the leader of the gang, Chris, losing her prom privileges.  One of the gang, Sue Snell, asks her boyfriend to ask Carrie to the prom in contrition to how she treated Carrie earlier.  This does not go over well for Chris or Carrie's mom.  Chris and her boyfriend rig a pail of pig's blood to drop on Carrie after she is elected prom queen.  The cruel trick is perpetrated, and in a fit of rage, Carrie unleashes her telekinesis on the crowd killing many of the attendees.  After the ordeal is over, she goes back home to find her fanatical mother believes Carrie is possessed by the Devil and must kill her.  Carrie kills her mother in self-defense, and in great sorrow, pulls down the house around her and her mother, killing herself in the process.

Normally, in these films, I go off on a screed about what is wrong with them and pontificate that Hollywood is out of touch.  But, this time, I'll start with what's right about it because is is shockingly good.  First, they changed very little of the story.  All the important elements are there (except for DePalma's very famous, or infamous, slow motion opening nude shower scene, but this is a new century.  Just kidding!), from Carrie's traumatic discovery of puberty, to very cruel kids mercilessly taunting her for no particular reason, to her fanatical, abusive mother who offers little solace from the slings and arrows that Carrie endures daily.  Probably the principle reason it is so good is that the original screenwriter, Leonard Cohen, wrote this one, too.  A wise decision by Pierce was taking some of the campiness out of Carrie and have the cast play it straight.  The plot of Carrie is a little out there, so with the superb cast toning it down, it grounds the movie into reality.  This is especially evident in Carrie's mother, a character that is easy to descend into camp because of her fanaticism.  I don't know if it was the feminine sensibilities of Pierce, but her portrayal of Carrie was much more frank and true.  I rematched the original Carrie to compare the two, and I identified more on an emotional level with this new Carrie.  Her feelings and state of mind come through more clearly in this version.  In my opinion, it was easier to identify and empathize with her plight, and it made a sad story even more tragic.  Also, the fact they cast real teenagers in this one instead of early twenty-somethings gives another touch of authenticity.  All in all, the film's tone was much more authentic.  It felt more real.

So why did I only give it three stars instead of four?  Two very big reasons.  Chlöe Moretz is great in this film.  She gives a wonderfully nuanced and believable performance as Carrie.  But the problem is that she is very beautiful and I don't buy her as a mousy and timid girl who would be picked on.  Sissy Spacek, at the time, was willowy and ethereal, and not that pretty in the Hollywood sense as the rest of her co-stars were.  She was heart-breakingly fragile on screen which made you feel more protective of her, and also more shocked at the end in her bloodthirsty rampage where she is an earth-bound Fury.  It is truly a horrifying performance on her part, and utterly believable duality.  Moretz is very good as well, but her beauty undercuts her vulnerability and thus doesn't ring as true.  But that said, she was still great.  Second, the movie wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants the blood-soaked, revenge-filled denouement at the end, but she only kills the bad girls.  In the original, Carrie kills everybody at the prom, friend and foe alike, and even this was toned down from the book where she kills the entire town.  I guess in an age that has seen the real-life horrors of Columbine or Sandy Hook, the movie company did not want to portray a massacre of more children then they had to.  While I am not necessarily advocating showing the slaughter of scores of children onscreen, at the same time, it cuts the horror of what we are seeing when we see Carrie selectively sparing the good people and only killing the bad.  She becomes an avenging angel of justice instead of a rage-fueled force-of-nature Fury come to life from who nobody is safe.  In the end, that is what is scary about Carrie, the randomness of her anger.  In the end, the new version felt like a cheat, and the way Hollywood made up for it was to up the gore quotient.  This, ultimately, removes the gasps of horror and only leaves the hoots and cheers of empty thrills.