This remake of Stephen King‘s Carrie is so familiar and without surprise that whether you’ve read the book, seen Brian De Palma‘s 1976 adaptation, know the plot line or have only seen the trailer there’s hardly a second you won’t be expecting. Only once in the film’s 100-minute running time do I remember something that actually made me take notice, otherwise this is the remake equivalent of a child’s coloring book with a director that didn’t want to color outside the lines.
Set in Chamberlain, Maine, the story follows a young girl, let’s call her Carrie (Chloe Moretz), who’s a bit weird thanks to a sheltered upbringing. She’s able to go about her high school days largely unnoticed until she begins her menstrual cycle in the gym shower and thanks to her mother (Julianne Moore) not preparing her for her transition into womanhood Carrie thinks she’s dying. Her classmates throw tampons at her, record it on their cellphones, upload it to YouTube and the wrath of a telekinetic shit storm is unleashed.
Carrie slowly learns about her powers all while finding herself under the protection of the school’s gym teacher, Miss Desjardin (Judy Greer). Also coming to her aid is one of the girls (Gabriella Wilde) who took part in the locker room hazing who decides she’s going to offer up her boyfriend as Carrie’s date for prom. Ain’t that just the sweetest?!?!
All of this is decided quite early in the film, but before we can get to the prom night massacre everyone is waiting to see we have to endure about an hour of predictable nonsense. Carrie will get picked on a little more, the mean girls will be punished, Carrie makes her own dress with the help of animated mice and little birds* and then she locks her mom into a closet. The more I think about it, I could be describing an episode of “South Park” only then it would be about one hundred times more entertaining. As it is, it’s just sort of dull.
Moretz spends most of her time mouth agape, tearful and wide-eyed (see above) as she learns about her powers. Moore, as Carrie’s looney tune mother, Margaret, whom we first meet giving birth to her young daughter all on her lonesome, is just a stereotypical nutter. Moving on…
There’s very little here that feels like any sort of signature directorial effort as Kimberly Peirce (Stop-Loss, Boys Don’t Cry) doesn’t do anything more than deliver a glossy teen thriller. A TV director of the week could have pulled this off over a couple weeks, which only makes me wonder why Peirce chose this as her first film in five years if she wasn’t going to do anything more than do a by-the-book remake.
I can only imagine how this film may have been different had it been made in the ’90s when features such as Scream and The Faculty were offering something a little new to the genre, something fun rather than so deadly serious as if anything we’re seeing here is actually all that scary. A little enthusiasm would have gone a long way into making this production something worth watching, but even the actors seem as bored. Even Carrie’s prom night fury is turned into a CG-wonderland where only a destructive car wreck manages to stand out while the rest looks like a bunch of sparks and people being tugged by wires every which way.
It’s not often I can say “you’ve seen this movie”, but with this one I can safely say if you’ve seen the ’76 feature, you’ve seen the 2013 copycat. There’s nothing new here, and even what has been reinterpreted for a modern audience feels redundant. I can’t say I hated it, instead I was just sort of numb to it.
* No, not really. Haven’t you seen Cinderella?
