Carrie

Why not just watch DePalma's 1976 adaptation? While this remake was made for TV, which sometimes can brand a film as belonging to a lower class, it is a more faithful adaptation of King's novel. Have you read the novel? Many of the complaints you have about the "changes" made for the TV adaptation are major occurrences in the novel. Even the way in which the main action is interrupted by interviews, follows the structure of the book. While I like to judge a film adaptation of a novel separate from the novel itself and not on how well it sticks to the story, I found the flow of the novel much more interesting than the almost slasher genre quality of DePalma's film, and subsequently found the remake just as interesting. Pick up a copy...it's a quick easy read and maybe you'll see the remake in a whole new light.

The most horrifying shot is the tableau at the end of the first bathtub scene near the end of the movie. (The second bathtub scene near the movie's end has more to do with turning this TV movie into a TV series--the plan that never came to fruition.) The three hour length of this TV version is well suited to amplify the drama and extend the finale rampage. The disaster effects are good. The different take on Margaret, Carrie's mother, is problematic. On one hand, she becomes more realistic and sympathetic, but on the other, nobody really wants to tone down a human monster whom we would rather not see as so human. Most cast members give fine performances including, but hardly limited to, the actors in the roles of Carrie, Sue, Billy, Tommy and Chris. Although Billy is surprisingly the one who seems to be possessed by evil; so where did that come from? I think this version is as good as the original in some ways, not as good in others and yet better in still others. A second crack at turning Stephen King's story into a film developed some of the story line more fully, which is to be expected with three hours.

To state that this new version of Carrie doesn't remotely compare with the original horror classic is to belabor the obvious, so I will leave that issue aside.

However, I expected this movie to be simply garbage, like the recent "Rose Red", or dull and mediocre, like the TV remake of The Shining, and surprisingly, it was better than that.

Making a remake of a classic film is usually inadvisable, but under the circumstances, this was an honest and decent rendition of Carrie. TV movies tend to be endlessly drawn out, with low proudction values, and this was better than average. Most of the credit goes, however to the casting. Most of the cast were a very competent group of actors who I think really gave it their best shot in creating a new angle on the Carrie story. Particular mention should be made of Angela Bettis in the title role. She tackled the daunting task of taking a part made very famous by someone else, and making it her own. Her Carrie is less a neurotic mess than Sissy Spacek', repressed and unhappy but still strong and with some guts. She was very sweet and vulnerable, and was often very touching, as when she was suddenly, out of the blue, asked to the prom by such a handsome, nice boy.

One big disappointment was Patricia Clarkson as Mrs. White. The part was really reduced in scope in this version, and the actress played her in a very restrained and bland fashion. I can well imagine that it was decided that to replicate Piper Laurie's over the top baroque performance was inadvisable. The idea here was to have a more low key sinister approach. But the result was completely dull and uninteresting character that had less relevance to the story than it should have.

So for a TV remake of a horror classic, I give it A for effort, with some very good elements to it. However, this is still a movie you will probably watch only once. The real Carrie, Brian DePalma's 1976 classic, is one that is always fun to watch again and again!

High school is a horrible place. Everyone is really cruel. The popular kids, pick on the nerds, the nerds dump on the popular kids, and the kids left in the middle, they pick on and make fun of the nerds and the popular kids. But there is always that one kid. The kid who sits at lunch by himself, he never says a word and boy does he get dumped on the most.

That's why the Stephen King's classic CARRIE will always appeal to mass audiences. She's the quiet kid who's always getting picked on. It prays on our irrational fear of the one who is a little odd, but it also gives us a glimpse into our own hurt psyche. We've all been put upon in our lives. We've all be humiliated by the people around us, and we all wish we could gat back at out enemies.

As I sat through the recent television remake of CARRIE, all I could think of is how I am Carrie, but I'm also the one who has destroyed people like Carrie. It's the human condition, I guess? It's that ever-present darkness we all have in our hearts. No matter how we try to suppress it.

Angela Bettis (May) plays Carrie White, a high school senior with a legalistic mother and the whole world against her. She's quiet, introspective, and really naive about what's going on the world. So of course all the girls in school pick on her, and tease her. They are downright cruel at some points.

Little does anyone know, but quiet Carrie has begun to develop weird powers. She can make things move using her mind. But when another prank goes wrong, Carrie goes medieval and takes no prisoners.

Angela Bettis was born to play Carrie and she is great. She has this innocent and yet dangerous look about her. She gives Carrie this poised quirkiness that the film desperately needs. You can see how each humiliation wears away at her façade, and without Bettis's small but subtle character changes, this simple and yet so complex character would fall apart at its seems.

I especially liked the scene in which she's waiting for her prom date Tommy (Tobias Mehler, Disturbing Behavior) to arrive. He's late, and she thinks she going to be stood up and as the minute's progress the furniture slowly begins to rise off the floor. That is a great sequence.

The supporting cast also does a great job Patricia Clarkson's (Far From Heaven) performance, as Carrie mom is one of true evil and even a little sympathy. She generally cares for Carrie, too bad she's so bad at showing it to her daughter. To bad she's been duped into the lie that legalism can save your soul. I like that it has more dimensions than Brian Deplama's characterization of Carrie's mom in the original film.

Rena Sofer (TV's ED) is also very good as Carrie's tough as nails gym teacher, one of Carrie's only supporters. She walks that thin line between feminine and bitchy without turning her character into a farce. I liked how she handled her gym class, when they obviously deserved worse, and I loved the small conversation she has with Carrie at the prom. Sofer is one great actress.

Director David Carson (Star Trek: Generations) visual style is also refreshing. Much of the film is shot with stylized steady cam and disjointed camera angels. While many times this technique can be distracting. It works really well for this film, and is never distracting.

My only qualm with this movie is pretty trite. Since it is a TV movie some sequences are a little choppy because of commercial breaks. I wished they had fixed some of the editing at these points for the DVD. Because I found it distracting that they would go to black only to come back to the same shot. It's also a tad overlong, and some sequences drag on merely to stretch the running time. But they are few and far between, so forget I even mentioned them.

This new CARRIE is really good. It has a great cast, a nice visual sense, and aspires to do something new and different. I would recommend you see Deplama's film before you see this one. But don't let that discourage you from giving the new CARRIE a look.

This is one of the best Made-For-TV movies I have ever seen.

It seems to make as much sense to remake a great movie like Brian DePalma's 1976 horror/suspense masterpiece CARRIE for television as it did to make a sequel of it in the form of THE RAGE: CARRIE 2 three years before, but that's what has been done. A lot of bells and whistles have been added to this television remake, but in the end this CARRIE is still in the shadow of the DePalma original.

Angela Bettis (GIRL INTERRUPTED) has the unenviable task of stepping into the shoes (and the prom dress) of Sissy Spacek in the title role of a New England teen tortured at school by cruel classmates (because she doesn't belong) and at home by her religiously fanatical mother (Patricia Clarkson, in the Piper Laurie role). Soon, she discovers she has telekinetic powers; and when the most gruesome of gags is played on her on prom night, all bets are off.

Though looking much more glazed in the eyes than Spacek ever did, Bettis gives a fairly good performance as Carrie; and Clarkson's portrayal of her uprighteous mother is much more low-key, but no less threatening, than Laurie's portrayal. The special effects, however obvious they might be, are also quite good. But in the end, the reputation of the 1976 original, with its combination of psychological horror and teen-angst drama, still hovers over this remake. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the pig's blood scene. It doesn't have the same jarring emotional impact this time around--not so much because we've seen it before, but because here it looks slightly laughable when the blood gets poured onto Bettis. Because of DePalma's use of slow-motion in the original, the blood hits Spacek like a tidal wave.

I give the CARRIE remake a '6' just for trying. I only regret that its shortcomings as a film have less to do with its execution as a film than the fact that the original movie still resonates much more fully.