Movie review: Carrie is a shoddy remake of a horror classic

Dear readers, your reviewer scares easy during horror movies. The ominous music that plays over the opening credits, objects moving on their own and the classic “monster suddenly appears in reflection” horror motif are all enough to reduce this film critic to a gibbering mess. So when this review informs you that the 2013 remake of De Palma’s Carrie is not scary at all – psychologically, gorily, spiritually or digestively – mark my words. If you must watch a movie named Carrie this weekend, make it the original, the classic directed by De Palma in 1976. [caption id=“attachment_1345211” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A still from the 2013 remake of Carrie[/caption] Directed by Kimberley Pierce, the 2013 version of Carrie manages the feat of simultaneously being devoutly faithful to the original without retaining anything of worth from the original story. If you haven’t seen the original, Carrie is the story of a 16-year-old high school student who is bullied incessantly in high school. Her mother – a single mother - is a religious nut who believes her daughter was the product of ‘sin’, and resorts to beating Carrie and locking her up in a cupboard under the stairs to punish Carrie. Years later, when the Dursleys did this to Harry Potter, he got a letter from Hogwarts. Carrie, on the other hand, realises she possesses telekinetic powers and when her fellow students finally push her over the edge, she takes bloody, bloody revenge. Skip to the modern remake, where Carrie’s humiliation is revamped for the digital age. Now her humiliation is taped on cell phones and ultimately posted on Youtube by Chris, a high school girl who makes Regina George from Mean Girls look like Mother Teresa. Chris is suspended and banned from prom for harassing Carrie, which leads her to plot revenge on Carrie. In the original, Carrie’s nemesis was an angry girl in an abusive relationship. Here, she is a sociopath without a conscience. Julianne Moore plays the mother, and while Moore doesn’t make a single misstep as the crazed mom, not even she can lift what is basically a very lazy adaptation of a fantastic movie. Carrie, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, is woefully miscast: while she can act as the shrinking, traumatised Carrie convincingly enough, she’s simply much too pretty to be Carrie. In the original, Sissy Spacek transformed from alien to prom queen with a transformation that genuinely shook the viewer. Here, Carrie’s experiments with telekinesis were benign enough to bring to mind another heroine who had the powers of telekinesis – Alex Mack from The Secret World of Alex Mack, a kiddie show from the nineties. Check out a clip from the show here, and mull over whether that’s the kind of association a successful horror movie should be making. Not only that, the new Carrie seems to veer into romantic comedy territory. Carrie is the hot nerd who just needs to take her glasses off to become attractive. The romantic comedy association gains strength when Carrie seems to be bonding somewhat excessively with a football player who takes her under his wing at prom. All of which let to me idly wondering if they’d changed the ending, and maybe Carrie would end up kissing the quarterback and the whole school would have a jolly food fight to resolve their differences. But no, Carrie definitely does end on a bit of a grim note. Should there be a spoiler alert if a movie is remaking an original which came out in 1976? Anyway, spoiler alert – Carrie kills pretty much everyone. Nice people, bad people, religious mother – no one is spared from her righteous fury. Put quite simply, don’t watch this movie. This Carrie remake is a lazy, badly-made replica of a classic movie with terrible writing and clumsy casting. In fact, this review will go one step further and invade your living rooms – if it comes on TV, change the channel.