Carrie (2013)

There are a number of superior horror films I could be reviewing right now, and none of them are going to be available for free forever. Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween, The Conjuring 2, The Mist, Scary Movie, just to name a few. All are waiting for me on demand, flashing their temporary "Free" sign, all but begging to be reviewed. And here I am writing about... this. So, why did I choose such an undesirable option? One that, in a way, I've already reviewed twice before. Maybe it's the sadomasochist within me, or maybe it's an opportunity to complete a trilogy of cinematic adaptations of the same story. Or maybe I'm just tired of reviewing only great horror films, and want to diversify the blog a bit to keep you readers on your toes. Plus, I won't be able to review next week on account of my best friend visiting in town, so what better time to give myself a somewhat easier assignment and leave everyone with my most negative review yet?

Horror remakes come in all shapes and sizes, and deserve to be approached and criticized on their own merits. A film isn't less just because it qualifies as a remake. Take John Carpenter's 1982 sci-fi/body horror, The Thing, a special effects extravaganza that's become a horror classic in its own right, despite possessing the dreaded R word. My guess is most fans don't even know that it's a remake of a film from the 1950s. Or David Cronenberg's The Fly, the highest rated horror remake that adapts only the basic concept of its source material (a man transforming into a housefly) before venturing off into a completely original narrative direction. The successful horror remake train doesn't stop there, but for every unique take on a classic property, there is also a shot-for-shot money-grubber like Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock's inimitable prototypical slasher masterpiece, Psycho. Unfortunately, despite a promising filmmaker behind the lens and a gallery of accomplished actors in front of it, Kimberly Peirce's 2013 remake of Brian De Palma's 1976 supernatural horror classic, Carrie, falls into the latter camp.

Lazy, rote, and uninspired, Peirce's attempt at a contemporary update of Stephen King's ultimate revenge fantasy is a soulless, emotionally hollow copy-and-paste hackwork that rehashes the essential narrative beats and rushes through almost every line of the original movie while bringing almost no ideas of its own to the table and overcompensating with a desperate overload of CGI and stereotypically graphic displays of vengeance. 

Before the finished product was unveiled to theaters nationwide, there was cause for excitement over this third adaptation. For starters, Carrie is a childhood favorite of mine since kindergarten, and one of the rare horror films that positions a female as the antagonist. Furthermore, as far as antagonists go, Carrie White is far from the traditional type, in that she's really not an antagonist at all: she's a lonely, tortured teenager in desperate need of love and base-level acceptance, two things constantly and ruthlessly denied from her. Secondly, while De Palma's original iteration remains the definitive, it's not a faultless motion picture. Pertaining to the strictest definition of horror, it's not particularly terrifying, and instead comes off today as a little on the campy side. Carrie had been remade once already in 2002, but in the restrictive form of a telemovie, and despite the best efforts of a flawlessly assembled cast, it didn't come within an inch of De Palma's bloody tiara. Taken in consideration with the still-prevalent issue of bullying in school, this story is ripe for a fresh, modern retelling. 

Kimberly Peirce would seem to be a perfect choice to reimagine King's story. After all, Carrie is a female-led odyssey, focusing on the tragic life of a teenage woman on the verge of developing into herself, and unlike the creator of the novel and the two sets of filmmakers before her, Peirce is herself a woman. Not only that, but a Jewish and non-binary one at that. Therefore, it's safe to assume she has some understanding of what it feels like to be a female outcast struggling for acceptance in a society determined to demonize and reject those that fall outside the norm. Let's also not forget Peirce is the co-writer and director of the 1999 true crime drama, Boys Don't Cry, a biopic of the life and murder of Brandon Teena, a 21-year-old transgender man raped, shot, and stabbed to death by two overt transphobes in Humboldt, Nebraska. Boasting a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and helping Hilary Swank secure her first Best Actress Oscar win, Peirce demonstrated a clear soft spot for the vulnerable and downtrodden. 

When asked about her approach to adapting the classic story a third time, Peirce assured her audience that she wasn't simply remaking De Palma's movie. Rather, she and her team were composing a more faithful adaptation of King's book while transferring the story to the modern universe. Neither of which is a bad idea on paper. Alas, maybe because she played zero role in the screenwriting process, maybe because of last-minute "creative" changes enforced by the studio, Peirce has proven that women, even those that exist outside the conventional binary, are not incapable of misleading, as the product she has delivered is nothing more than a carbon copy of De Palma's 1976 originator, a "recast," as my father put it.

At this point, I'm honestly exhausted from describing the plot of King's revenge tale, and anyone reading this most likely is already familiar with the nuts and bolts. But for the purpose of fulfilling my responsibilities as a critic and adhering to the requirements of a review, here I go for the third time, pretending it's once again the first. Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a lonely, introverted teenager who lives in the town of Chamberlain, Maine under the oppressive thumb of her religious fundamentalist mother, Margaret (Julianne Moore), who chastises, lectures, and physically abuses her own daughter for literally nothing while spouting off Bible verses in self-righteous justification. The only place Carrie is permitted to go besides home is Ewen High School, where she's subjected to even more ridicule at the merciless hands of her popular classmates, led by serial-killer-in-the-making Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday). One day while showering after gym class, Carrie experiences her first period, and because she was never educated on the subject of menstruation by her misogynistic mother, she panics in the belief she's bleeding to death. Seeking help from her fellow peers, all Carrie is met with is further abuse, as Chris and her friends exploit the opportunity to laugh at and pelt Carrie with tampons and sanitary napkins while chanting, "Plug it up!"

Carrie's only source of proactive motherly protection is her gym teacher, Rita Desjardin (Judy Greer), who punishes the bullies and attempts to impart some self-esteem into the tortured girl. A second (albeit secret) friend manifests in the form of Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde), the former best friend of Chris who experiences severe guilt for initiating the attack against Carrie in the locker room. In an effort to truly make amends, Sue asks her boyfriend, big-man-on-campus Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort), to escort Carrie to the upcoming senior prom in her place, a plea to which he reluctantly obliges. 

Bitter about being banned from the prom for her own disgusting behavior yet hopelessly lacking in self-awareness, Chris conspires with her juvenile delinquent boyfriend, Billy Nolan (Alex Russell), and right-hand woman, Tina Blake (Zoe Belkin), to exact misplaced revenge on Carrie by ruining her first chance at happiness. Unbeknown to the bullies, Carrie has awakened and begun experimenting with a previously dormant supernatural ability called telekinesis, one that will teach her once-peaceful town an unforgettable lesson about the catastrophic dangers of spitting on those perceived as different.

One of the fundamental mistakes with this remake was the decision to hire Lawrence D. Cohen, the writer of De Palma's adaptation, as a co-writer, because he essentially rewrites the exact same screenplay while weaving in a few insubstantial modern updates to ground the story in the here and now. He's not alone, writing alongside Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, but it feels like all they did was pull up Cohen's original screenplay online, highlight it in blue, click "copy," relocate to a blank document, and click "paste." Voila. Coming up with original ideas to distinguish your contemporary update from its iconic 1970s forebear? What sucker needs to put in all that extra effort when you can just rob your own prior success? Oh yeah, and toss in some cellphones here and there. There's not much room for Peirce to exercise any creative freedom when the two men cooking her screenplay have saddled her with such a pointless, nearly shot-for-shot rehash, the exact opposite of what she'd initially promised. 

With a movie like Carrie, that's been adapted for the screen twice now, in both a big and small capacity, the most exciting aspect is undoubtedly the casting. We've now had two sets of actors play the same gallery of characters invented on the page by Stephen King in 1974, so who's taking on the roles this time? When presented with the news of an impending third adaptation of his first published horror novel, King voiced his support for Lindsay Lohan to assume the eponymous role, an opinion warmly welcomed by the OG bloody prom queen, Sissy Spacek: "Oh my God, she's really a beautiful girl, and so I was very flattered that they were casting someone to look like me instead of the real Carrie described in the book. It's gonna be real interesting." Flattering as that notion may have been to Spacek, I would have preferred an actress who matched the physical description of the titular antihero: slightly overweight and covered from head to toe in the classic adolescent appearance-diminisher, acne. 

As is often the case with Hollywood productions, the role was presented to a group of fat-free, conventionally attractive actresses: Shailene Woodley, Dakota Fanning, Lily Collins, Bella Heathcote, Hailee Steinfeld, Emily Browning, Haley Bennett, and Chloe Grace Moretz. The decision whittled down to the final two contestants, the former of whom would've come the closest to resembling her 70s originator with her freckled face and babyish cadence that belies her age. However, it was Moretz who took home the tiara for Peirce's remake, making her the first genuine adolescent to take on the role of Carrie White, following the 26-year-old Spacek and 29-year-old Angela Bettis. How ironic, then, that Moretz, who was 15 at the time of filming, making her one or two years younger than her character, submits by far the least full-bodied performance of the three. Based on her performance as Abby the vampire from Matt Reeves' superior American remake, Let Me In, Carrie White sounded a perfect fit for the precocious star: a young girl wise beyond her limited years, mistreated and discarded by the cold, wicked world around her, only to unveil a hidden power that grants her the ability to finally fight back. That was basically the role she played in the previous remake, in which Moretz was only 12. Carrie differs enough from Abby to save her from the accusation of typecasting, blending characteristics of both the blood-dependent vampire and the bullied, withdrawn protagonist whom she befriends. 

Before I dig into my criticisms with Moretz' portrayal, I want to dispense with the assertion that she's "too pretty" to play Carrie. Yes, there's no denying that, of the three actresses to currently embody the role, Moretz boasts the most naturally beautiful appearance, which stands in stark contrast to that of the previous actress, Bettis, who was so unnaturally hideous it was discomforting in a way that made her poetic for Carrie. And no, she doesn't come close to resembling her literary description, free of a single ounce of excess fat or a stray dot of acne on her Hollywood-friendly cheeks. But we need to remember something crucial: in real life, even attractive women get bullied. Singling someone out and subjecting them to an undeserved hell isn't always motivated by physical appearance. Take Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old British-Irish student at an American high school from South Hadley, Massachusetts who was bullied to suicide by a gang of five malicious classmates. Not only did Prince possess a super model-appropriate beauty, but her primary tormentor, Ashley Longe, was overweight and plain-looking. In a stereotypical cinematic version of events, their roles would be reversed: the thin, pretty girl would bully the fat one for, you know, being fat. Real life doesn't always conform to such simplifications. 

So I fully support Moretz for Carrie. The problem is, despite her credentials and her long-standing participation in the horror genre (her first role was in The Amityville Horror, itself a supernatural horror remake), she's not very good. No, not because her inherent beauty gets in the way of taking her seriously as someone who gets bullied day in, day out by the popular crowd. In fact, Moretz and the costume and hairstyling departments do a fairly good job of concealing it beneath a hideously conservative wardrobe, a mop of bushy, dirty blonde hair in need of a brushing, and a credibly demure demeanor. If it wasn't for those three setbacks, Moretz would blend in effortlessly with the horde of mean girls clogging up her high school halls. Nonetheless, she's unconvincing in her expressions of fear, pain, and humiliation. While performances deserve to be judged on their own merits, it's impossible not to compare them with the two sets that preceded them, and every one comes up short. In Carson's remake, when Bettis realizes she's bleeding in the shower, her physical embodiment of ignorance and panic is palpable: her entire body vibrates, she hyperventilates, her eyes go crossed. For her scene, Moretz emits an unremarkable scream of "Help! Help! Help me!" replayed three times in a silly directorial flourish. Her fear is no more convincing when you repeat it twice. When she sits down beside her mother and implores her to talk to her about menstruation, Moretz' line delivery is strained, sounding like a whiny impersonation of a child, even though she herself is an actual child. Perhaps she's just too mature to effectively inhabit someone so emotionally stunted. Often, she resorts to the dreaded "dramatic whisper" to compensate for her shortage of emotional depth, evinced when she telekinetically silences her mother's protests about attending the prom. 

Once Carrie discovers her newfound power to move objects using the force of her mind, Moretz conveys Carrie's mounting self-confidence with euphoric smiles, one of her more convincing features. In moments when she exercises her telekinesis, her face takes on a somewhat orgasmic expression, which pales in comparison to Bettis' more painful reaction, which made moving a hairbrush look as though she was straining a muscle in her brain. It's not a terrible performance per se, as Moretz does display the correct body language of someone terrified of her own shadow, jumping at the slightest touch on her shoulder and looking downward while being spoken to by a jock, but neither is it an Oscar-worthy depiction of the awkwardness and heartache that make up horror's most misunderstood villainess. 

For her prom night transformation, Moretz is a victim of Peirce's misguided direction that betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the character's emotional state. For their scenes, Spacek and Bettis stood on the stage completely still, with their arms by their sides and their faces an expressionless mask of pent-up rage now unleashed. Their Carries were so overwhelmed with rage, heartbreak, and humiliation that they utterly lost control of their power, unleashing havoc without realizing what they were doing or who they were harming. By contrast, Moretz' Carrie is in full control, reveling in the power to serve her tormentors their just desserts after years of senseless abuse. Rather than holding her arms still and straight, she waves them around to simulate the movement of objects, like knocking down a light, flinging a table at someone recording her rampage, turning on sprinklers, or whipping one of her bullies with electrical wires. Instead of keeping her face blank and inscrutable, obscuring her degree of awareness of the horror she's causing, Moretz wears a smile of unashamed sadism. While she's entitled to enjoy the cathartic pleasure of long-overdue revenge, her Carrie comes across a little too in control to be entirely sympathetic, and it's a lot less frightening when she strips away the ambiguity and stillness of her predecessors' performances. 

When casting the role of Margaret White, whom you could argue is the primary antagonist of the story, Peirce was torn between Jodie Foster and Julianne Moore. Apart from the Oscar winners' reputations for being two of the most talented actresses of their lifetime, both also share a more specific commonality: sharing the role of Clarice Starling, the greatest final woman in horror history in this critic's opinion. Foster immortalized the role with her Oscar-winning performance in The Silence of the Lambs, only to be recast by Moore in the first sequel, Hannibal. So it's fitting that both women were competing for the role of another horror icon, this one of a more antagonistic nature. Possibly owing to her red hair, which evokes that of the original actress, Piper Laurie, whose deliriously over-the-top interpretation of a single mother brainwashed by a nonsensical and hypocritical ideology earned her an Oscar nomination, Moore was ultimately cast. 

Like Moretz for Carrie, there's nothing questionable about Moore's casting. It's always fun to watch an actor known for heroic or lighthearted roles take a dip in the cesspool of villainy. In terms of appearance, Moore inhabits Margaret with unsettling, transformative perfection. This is not the sexy, warm Julianne from Boogie Nights or Crazy, Stupid, Love. She's haggard, with brooding eyes and gray streaks running throughout her ginger hair that make her look like a witch you'd expect to find living in a boarded-up hovel deep in the woods. For her interpretation of this twisted mother figure, Moore attempts a balance of Laurie's outspoken psychotic zeal and Patricia Clarkson's soft-spoken earnestness, delivering religious rants against the sins of womanhood in a deranged whisper, her eyes shining with tears of desperation and perpetual anxiety. It's a balance that doesn't quite come off, registering as unintentionally campy where Laurie's embrace of camp was proudly intentional. Clarkson demonstrated greater skill at conveying the tragedy of Margaret, the regret she felt at the abuse she inflicted on her daughter even as she was doing it, and transitioning from even-tempered to enraged in the snap of a finger. Like her immediate predecessor, Moore steers clear of the theatricality that permeated Laurie's legendary supporting turn, opting for a more melancholy and self-loathing portrait of devotion turned devilish, but this is not a role for which she'll be remembered well.

Peirce and her writers do contribute some worthwhile changes to her character, though, affording her a job as a seamstress that temporarily removes her from the confines of her house and explains Carrie's penchant for sewing. Margaret is also shown to self-mutilate, taking out her inner hatred on her own body as opposed to solely her daughter's. Cuts on her forearm suggest a woman who's contemplated suicide many times before, and in one disturbing low-angle close-up at her dry cleaning store, Margaret lifts up her dress and scratches her leg before inserting a sewing needle therein, all while Moore maintains a straight face edged with a silent cry for help. 

The most significant difference between Moore's Margaret and those of Laurie and Clarkson is the tenderness she exhibits for Carrie, that is when she isn't smacking her upside the head with the Bible and dragging her into a closet to pray for unneeded forgiveness. From the moment she first lays eyes on Carrie following a tremendously painful, unmedicated birth, there's an inherent connection between Carrie and Margaret, a love and mutual dependence that can't be ignored. That continues into Carrie's adolescence. Instead of referring to her as "woman" as she does in the original, Margaret calls her "little girl," signifying her desperation to keep Carrie trapped in her dependent, childlike state. It isn't intended as a demeaning insult. When Margaret wakes Carrie in her closet, she envelops her face between her palms, kisses her twice on her cheek, and whispers that she loves her before tying her hair in a matching pigtail. Moore and Moretz look into each other's eyes and smile with an unmistakable, shared love. 

Despite the pain she causes her daughter, Margaret does love her, only that love is soiled by a mental illness that's gone undiagnosed and unchecked. Her abuse is underlain by an irrational fear of losing the only person she has in her life, the most important person, the only one she can control, to the cruelty of the world around them, not realizing the irony of her actions. She's more dangerous than any high school bully could be. With Moore's warmer hearted rendition of Margaret comes the side effect of mitigating the abusiveness that makes her one of the most fearsome and vile mothers in the horror hall of fame while sapping her of the power to intimidate.

As Chris Hargensen, the spoiled leader of the clique of mean girls at Ewen who prides herself on making life a living hell for social outcasts, Portia Doubleday is going up against two formidable predecessors. Like Moore and Moretz, she falls far short of the standard. At first glance, Doubleday appears a perfect candidate for the role. While I'm sure this is a role she'd prefer to have wiped from her IMDB credits, she played a similar character named Jasmine in Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son: the narcissistic, ice-cold leader of the most popular girls at her school. She derived pleasure from embarrassing new, insecure students, and didn't hesitate to poke fun at physical disadvantages. Naturally, the role of Chris should fit Doubleday like a glove. All she has to do is take that comedic role and dial it up to a serious volume befitting a horror film. It seems she's dialed it up a bit too high, exaggerated in her unmotivated hatred toward Carrie and the "Daddy's little girl" persona she puts on for her lawyer father, who's clearly bailed her out of every jam she's ever brought on herself. During her gym class meltdown in which she refuses to take accountability for her bullying of Carrie and attempts to rile her friends to join her side, Doubleday is somehow both overly restrained yet cringingly over the top, her voice markedly lacking conviction. Like Moore's combined rendition of Margaret, Doubleday struggles to balance the amusing whininess of Nancy Allen against the disarming subtlety of Emilie de Ravin to disastrously flat effect. She has the appearance of a narcissistic, coldhearted bully on her way to becoming a high-profile murderess: thick, jet-black hair, a scowl on her face, and a black leather jacket to match that of her equally delinquent boyfriend. But that's all Doubleday brings to the role: appropriate appearance. Beyond that, her Chris is one-dimensionally soulless, evil for the sake of being evil, her one fleeting moment of borderline humanity occurring when she breaks into her school and catches sight of the prom decor, her longing eyes revealing a hitherto unimaginable sadness. 

In the role of her not-so-better half, Alex Russell opts for the more malicious rendition offered by his immediate predecessor, Jesse Cadotte. While Russell has admitted to Entertainment Tonight that John Travolta, who originated the part in 1976, is one of his favorite actors, he never once pays homage to the goofball, inebriated ineptitude exuded by his idol, clearly preferring Cadotte's more unhinged and aggressively masculine personality. Like his onscreen girlfriend, Russell masters the appearance of his character, in turn resembling the classical bad-boy look of Cadotte in 2002: he wears black shades and a leather jacket, styled his hair into a buzz cut, grew a light beard, and gained muscles in his arms to project a macho exterior. Which is all he adds to Billy: the age-old exterior of a greaser. Russell lacks that glint of menace invariably present in Cadotte's eyes, and is given virtually nothing to do besides yell "Shut up" at Chris and issue conditional death threats that don't even seem to shake her in the slightest. In other words, Russell looks like a tough guy, but he's never once genuinely frightening. 

As the jock and princess with mutual hearts of gold, Gabriella Wilde and Ansel Elgort each reap the benefits of seemingly unattainable Hollywood good looks. Of the young newcomers in this rendition of Carrie, only Elgort has emerged as a modern movie star, and he's certainly not undeserving. Tommy Ross is for him what Glen Lantz turned out to be for Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Elgort and Wilde make a solid couple, each conveying an undisguised good-heartedness beneath their top-of-the-food-chain popularity. Whether he's strolling down the hall clasping hands with students and teachers alike (an admittedly corny method for conveying one's social standing), halting a game of lacrosse to run to his girlfriend in flattering slow motion, or struggling to allay Carrie's suspicions, Elgort possesses a megawatt smile, a God-given swagger, and a down-to-earth sweetness and charisma that makes him instantly trustworthy. His only misstep is fluffing a line ("Hey, you're beautiful!") to Moretz that was delivered with the utmost sincerity by William Katt, amplified by a beautiful musical cue. As spoken by Elgort, it's turned from heartwarming to skin-crawlingly awkward, but that's more a reflection of more misguided directing by Peirce. Either she wanted the delivery that way for God knows what reason, or didn't care to refine it. For her part, Wilde communicates authentic remorse, establishing Sue as a good person who got caught up in the toxicity of groupthink and is determined to cleanse her conscience by doing something nice for someone whose life is dominated by misery, even if that means selflessly sacrificing the one night she's been anticipating her entire life. 

Stepping up to the plate as the true mother figure Carrie needs, Judy Greer possesses both the authority of a gym teacher determined to make her students pay for their inexcusable behavior and the maternal warmth of a friend who sees a beautiful young woman waiting to burst from her inhibited shell. When Miss Desjardin sees Carrie lingering on the sidelines of the pool during volleyball, she sees only a surface-level view of someone too insecure or lazy to participate. However, once she discovers that student sprawled on the floor, holding a towel over her naked body, bleeding and crying in pain, her whole attitude changes, a protectiveness and affection suddenly emerging. Greer uses her soft, comforting voice to good effect, expressing compassion and understanding without a whiff of condescension or concealed apathy. When it comes to exercising discipline against the mean girls, however, she lacks the intimidation and borderline unhinged ferocity of either of her predecessors, especially Rena Sofer. It doesn't help that, in this politer iteration, to comply with modern faculty regulations, Miss D. isn't permitted to lay her hands on Chris, merely suspending her from school, banning her from prom, and ordering her to leave her class.

The most disappointing performance in Carrie comes from Zoe Belkin, who plays Tina Blake, Chris' best friend and co-conspirator in the prom night prank against Carrie. Despite her function as strictly a supporting character, almost literally attaching herself to Chris' hip and complying with her orders like a lapdog, Tina is one of the most notable characters because of the original two actresses who played her. She's definitely a case of the actors elevating their characterization. Belkin has a lot to live up to because she's appropriating a character infamously portrayed to perfection by a pair of scream queens who understood how to raise a middle finger to the limitations of a supporting character. Belkin falls so far below that bar as to make Tina forgettable, lacking the ebullience and scene-dominating presence of either P.J. Soles or Katharine Isabelle. She's pretty much just there, sitting on Chris' bed watching her and Billy ferociously make out, standing beside Chris in the locker room, laughing and throwing tampons at Carrie. There's nothing remarkable about her character this time, and Belkin is unable to bring anything to her besides generic gorgeousness. Sure, she's the prettiest Tina of all, but also the blandest. Where Soles wore that memorable red baseball cap and pigtails, and Isabelle maneuvered between giddiness and withering glares of contempt, Belkin just flashes a mischievous smile, chews suggestively on a pen cap, and speaks in a seductive voice. Anyone could've played Tina in this way. Maybe it wouldn't be such a glaring disappointment had the role not been turned into one of the most delightfully evil sidekicks twice before.

Even more forgettable than Belkin's Tina are the indistinguishable remainder of the Ultras in Peirce's remake: redheaded Heather (Samantha Weinstein) and a pair of identical twin sisters named Nicki and Lizzy (Karissa and Katie Strain, respectively). Heather, you see... has red hair, and the twins are distinguished by the color of clothing they typically wear: blue for Nicki and pink for Lizzy. Together, these bitches could separate from Chris and Tina and start their own clique called "The Interchangeables." While they're at it, they could invest in some individualizing personality traits, because all they do is hang around in the same locations and partake in the same activities: ganging up on Carrie in the locker room and chorusing the same chant, laughing over the video of what just took place in said locker room while gathered in front of Billy's car, getting their hair done at a salon, texting on their phones like generic modern popular girls with no interior lives. The twins are handed one line each, which, of course, they're instructed to utter simultaneously (because twins' brains are connected, you see, so they think and say the same thing at the same time), and Heather is given four, none of which are too challenging to memorize. What they're deprived of are any spirited interactions that could potentially unveil some nuances to their cardboard surfaces. At one point, Heather walks in on Carrie in the bathroom when she's testing her telekinesis on a mirror. Carrie storms out, and Heather remains still, seemingly concerned. She could've tried to befriend Carrie, express remorse for her participation in the shower assault, and defend her from the meaner girls. But no. By the end, she remains every bit as heartless and deserving of death.

Henry Morton (Barry Shabaka Henley), the ill-equipped principal of Ewen High, is on hand to provide a light dose of comedic relief in this iteration, but it falls pitifully flat. The "joke" is, despite running a school dominated by natural born sadists, Morton is a pantywaist, hopelessly incapable of hearing about such harrowing, stomach-turning topics like menstruation. He nearly passes out at the sight of a period-blood handprint on Miss Desjardin's shorts, can't bring himself to say the big P word even if his life depended on it, and uses "things" as a euphemism for the names of feminine hygiene products. You see, he's a stereotypical man, and nothing makes a man's lunch come up faster than the thought of "woman things." Yawn. But hey, at the very least, Henley's Morton has been cured of his infuriating bout of amnesia, mispronouncing Carrie's name only once ("Casey" instead of "Cassie") then never again after he's corrected.

Cohen and Sacasa's decision to translate Stephen King's story of a bullied teen who exacts revenge against the town that's abused her into a modern era isn't without merit. Since the release of De Palma's film, school violence has certainly skyrocketed, with countless disturbed individuals showing up at their school with a gun and mowing down anyone in their path, regardless of their prior relationship. The most well-known of these tragedies remains the Columbine High School massacre, in which two seniors murdered 13 students and one teacher while wounding 23 others in the pursuit of payback against the popular kids who shunned and belittled them. This bestows upon Peirce's Carrie a degree of both timeliness and timelessness. Bullying is a social disease that, like an undead horror icon or COVID, will never truly die. There's more awareness of it nowadays, and perhaps greater consequences for those caught participating. Schools hold assemblies dedicated to "ending" bullying and encouraging others against reducing oneself to a bystander. Even South Park made a parody of the silliness of it all.

 

At the end of the day, misery begets misery, and there will always be someone so full of anger and pain they can't comprehend or give voice to that the only way to purge themselves of it is to inflict it on others. Now we live in the age of cellphones and computers, granting bullies access to expand their methods of torment beyond the hallways of their school and into the bedrooms of their targets. No longer can you go home early in the afternoon and find relief in the safety and privacy of your own home. 

Cohen and Sacasa don't have much to say about the modern power of cyberbullying beyond, "Hey, you know how the bullies pelt Carrie with tampons in the locker room? Well, what if they also record her freakout on a cellphone and post it online?" That's precisely what Chris (who else would it be?) does. It's not enough that Carrie's lying on the floor, screaming and crying for help. With the power of modern technology, she can aim her phone at the defenseless girl, click "record," and re-watch the event as much as she'd like. But why stop there? Why deprive the rest of the world of this "hilarity"? Chris uploads Carrie's humiliation to YouTube, exploiting two modern features not available in 1976 or 2002, and as an homage to The Rage: Carrie 2, intentional or not, Tina plays the video on a projection screen at the prom to augment the pig blood prank, resulting in what I call a "double dump." Sadly, this utilization of cyberbullying contributes little of value to the overall story besides grounding it in 2013 and giving the mean kids another way to hurt Carrie for no reason. (As for how Carrie, a student in a modern public school that, I can only imagine, mandates health classes, is capable of being uneducated about menstruation is conveniently overlooked in the script.) 

While De Palma lacked the advantage of a bigger budget, necessitating him to restrict Carrie's rampage to the gymnasium of her school, Peirce has the edge over her inspiration in that single, superficial department. As a result, she has the creative and financial freedom to let her protagonist cut loose with her newfound paranormal ability in more ways than De Palma's could. As expected from a big-budget 2013 horror production, the special effects are entirely realistic, if a tad overused, lending the movie a more action-oriented flavor that sometimes distracts from and sensationalizes its (allegedly) character-driven narrative. Books float around a bedroom, a bed levitates with Carrie still in it, a mirror shatters, a crack suddenly erupts in the closet door while Carrie screams to be let out. The latter detail is added just to provide Margaret with an escape once the tables between mother and daughter are turned, serving no other purpose. The effects are better utilized in the post-prom disaster, allowing Peirce to adapt an aspect of the novel omitted from the first movie. When Carrie stomps her foot on the street, it creates a crack that spreads throughout and forces Chris and Billy to stop their car, circle back, and face the consequences for their actions, the street in front of them crumbling and caving in like quicksand.

Likewise, the kills in Carrie are more graphic than in the previous iterations, particularly regarding the worst offenders. Whereas De Palma relied on a hellish red color scheme, a split-screen gimmick, a fire hose gone rogue, and the sight and sound of people toppling over tables and screaming their heads off to cover for a lack of carnage, Peirce one-ups him on that front as well. For the most part, students and faculty run around the gym, bang on the locked doors, and scream, but the filmmakers single out a group of bullies who deserve more than that. Jackie Talbot (Max Topplin), Tina's date who helps swap the ballots to ensure Tommy and Carrie are elected king and queen and laughs at Carrie's locker room video, is crushed between bleachers. Tina is whipped repeatedly by live wires until she stumbles into a fire that quickly engulfs her. Nicki and Lizzy, who seemed to do everything together, poetically get to die together, thrown onto the floor and held down so they're trampled to death by a myriad of running feet. 

Peirce and her editor, Lee Percy, reserve the most prolonged and gory fates for Billy and Chris, the executioners of the deadly (in more ways than expected) prank. In the prior movies, the couple is killed together swiftly when their car flips over and explodes (Allen and Travolta) or wraps around a tree (de Ravin and Cadotte). Doubleday and Russell aren't let off the hook so easily. Billy gets his nose smashed into his steering wheel in (reasonably) sadistic slow motion. After being forced to realize her boyfriend is dead (not that Doubleday projects much depth of grief) and watching the lock disappear on its own, trapping her in the car, Chris' face, once so stunning and unblemished, is smashed through the windshield, likewise in slow motion, with shards of glass spraying outward in a way that would be suitable for 3D. And that's before the money shot: a close-up of Chris' face poking out of the hole, drenched in the burgundy of blood with shards of glass protruding from her flesh. If little else, Peirce's Carrie can lay claim to great makeup effects. 

Beyond the emphasis on the justified suffering of Carrie's main tormentors, the prom night massacre, the centerpiece of every Carrie adaptation, is a disaster in the wrong way from intended. Peirce recycles the basic beats of De Palma's setup -- Sue arriving at prom, noticing the bucket of pig blood above Carrie's head, being locked out by Ms. Desjardin under the assumption she's trying to sabotage Carrie's special night despite her insistence otherwise, Carrie standing on stage relishing her one fleeting instance of joy, Chris getting ready to pull the rope -- while eschewing the masterful buildup of tension that made it so suspenseful. It wasn't just about what was happening, but the technical manner in which it was executed: the lyrical Pino Donaggio score, dramatic and drenched in dread when centered on Chris and Billy, magical and fairy tale-like when on Carrie; the brisk editing that cut back and forth between Sue's horrified realization, Chris' lip-licking anticipation, Miss Collins' suspicion, and Carrie's unsuspecting bliss; the red spotlight foreshadowing the fiery doom to come. Under Peirce's flat, rushed direction, the same events just happen without any artistic embellishments whatsoever, hurriedly racing to the predictable blood-dump that audiences are waiting for. 

Once the blood spills, Percy repeats the tactic from the shower scene, replaying the splash four times from different angles. Instead of having the doors spontaneously close all at once to allow a sense of panic to mount within the prom-goers, Peirce commences the revenge with an explosion, Carrie's enraged scream sending everyone flying backward and forward. It's an overly chaotic approach to a set piece that concludes too soon after it starts, exacerbated by Marco Beltrami's woefully ineffective score which combines screeching strings with electronic chords in a way that recalls his work on Scream. Hans Zimmer's horse-escape violin theme from The Ring would've been a far more pulse-pounding and tonally appropriate accompaniment. There's also a lack of consistency and logic to this scene. Despite the doors being telekinetically locked and everyone on the floor being electrocuted, how do so many students manage to escape the burning building? In the original prom scene, only two bullies -- Norma and Kenny -- were legitimately laughing at Carrie, but because her sanity had cracked at that point, she imagined everyone else in attendance laughing as well, including her closest confidante. Here, the entire student body, excepting two teens established as good, spontaneously bursts out laughing at the video of Carrie's period panic attack, without the possibility of subjectivity. It's utterly absurd and impossible to take seriously that this many people could be so collectively sadistic.

While the bulk of the visual enhancements in Carrie pertains to the special effects, cinematographer Steve Yedlin executes a few fancy practical moves now and again. When Carrie returns home from laying waste to her school, he tilts the camera to the side to signify the degree to which her world has gone askew. When Ms. Desjardin walks in on Carrie sitting by herself crying in the locker room, Yedlin silhouettes them against the glare of the overhead light in the shower behind them. 

The ending of the original Carrie is one of the most influential and chilling in horror history, and neither remake has succeeded in recapturing its evergreen ability to crawl under the skin. De Palma utilized the power of slow-motion, pacing, and music to combine a flawlessly timed jump scare with a nightmare reveal that provided subtle insight into the now-fractured psyche of the sole survivor of the prom night massacre. Cohen and Sacasa conceive an ending that pays homage to the former's original without ripping it off outright, having the same character commit the same action, only this time it's not a dream. In place of the iconic bloody arm-grab from beyond the grave, the filmmakers leave us with a parting shot that's far less coherent and a lot more stupid (accompanied and followed by a misplaced girl-power rock-and-roll song for the end credits). What implication is it trying to impart? That somehow Carrie survived being stabbed in the back and crushed beneath a rain of rocks? Or that her telekinesis has now been passed on to Sue from beyond the grave, thus leaving the door open for a sequel? Now that's a suggestion scarier than anything presented in the 99 minutes beforehand.

3.8/10