Carrie - Review

In this revamp of the horror classic, a social outcast teenager is pushed to unleash her telekinetic powers onto her peers and her overbearing mother after being tricked for the last time at her senior prom in Carrie.


I wouldn't say that I was necessarily excited for Carrie, but I was looking forward to seeing it. First of all, the 1976 Carrie is by far one of my favorite movies. Not to mention the fact that I love the original book by Stephen King. I will admit that after seeing the first teaser I was a bit concerned and even after seeing the full trailer I wasn't too pro on this remake. However, I did say I would see it. Now that I have seen it I wouldn't say it was completely atrocious, but it was pretty darn bad.

I want to start off by saying something that I said a long time ago: Chloe Moretz is too pretty to be Carrie White. Seriously, she is a really cute girl and appears to be very lively. Carrie is not lively and is supposed to be fairly plain and not necessarily pretty. This was an issue for me throughout the entire movie. Even when they attempted to make Moretz appear plain and a little ragged it didn't work. If they were determined to put her in this movie I would have given her the role of Sue Snell. But she was Carrie and I wouldn't say she did a terrible job but she wasn't on par with what she has done in the past. I have a fairly high expectation from Chloe Moretz because she is that good. In this movie I think she was held back and it was an unfortunate case of bad direction and a poor script. Her sweetness is believable and even the creepiness, but for some reason it didn't all come together. She was definitely just out of her element.
Julianne Moore did a fantastic job, though. She played Margaret White wonderfully. Not the same as Piper Laurie, obviously, but she did it good. As for the rest of the cast I wouldn't compliment any of them, especially Judy Greer. I really like Greer and I think she is a great comic actress, but she was so bland and flat in this movie. Comparing her to the original gym teacher played by Betty Buckley it was borderline insulting. Billy Nolan was a waste of a character in this one, too. Alex Russell probably has a grand total of 5min of screentime.
As far as direction goes, I think Kimberly Peirce really missed the mark here. She was coming off a great movie with Boys Don't Cry, but I have to remind myself that was 14 years ago already. Peirce hasn't directed since 2008 with the military drama Stop-Loss and I'm beginning to think there is a reason she only has three major films under her belt.
One thing that I thought would bother me that surprisingly didn't was bringing the story into the present day. Yes, the kids had cell phones and video cameras and the cliques were a lot more pronounced but I wouldn't say it didn't work. I thought it worked pretty well. The beginning "plug it up" scene played into the whole movie due to the fact that Chris Hargensen recorded everything on her cell phone and posted it online. It brought it up to the times and it was believable.

Now I must mention what really irked me and unfortunately there are spoilers, so if you haven't seen Carrie yet and don't want to know... go away and come back after you've seen it!








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