Carrie : La Vengeance

A reimagining of the classic horror tale about Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz), a shy girl outcast by her peers and sheltered by her deeply religious mother (Julianne Moore), who unleashes telekinetic terror on her small town after being pushed too far at her senior prom.

This film is criticized pretty harshly by audiences, especially horror fans. And for the most part, these criticisms are unfair. One minor problem with the film is the use of CGI when it was not necessary. And the major problem was remaking a classic. As it is impossible to improve on a classic, any attempt will be met with strong resistance.

But there are many strengths. First and foremost, Chloe Moretz, who is easily the best actress of her generation. Horror fans are lucky she has worked extensively in the genre, because her roles have brought much strength to otherwise average films. While perhaps not as awkward as Sissy Spacek, she handles the role well.

There are some aspects that are closer to the novel, including the more violent and intense climax, and the pregnancy subplot. This version has a more sympathetic Sue and Tommy as well as a more self-confident Carrie. These are different takes on characters that make an important, nuanced difference and allows for different interpretations. The updating of technology adds a different angle, too. This is its own movie in many respects.

Is the original better? Of course. It is a classic and directed by the legendary Brian DePalma. It probably should not have been tampered with (although it has been before). But if it had to be done, the people involved could have done much worse than this.

This movie is hardly a scene-by-scene account of Brian De Palma brilliantly 'Carrie'. Yes, it impossible not to compare any remake to its original version, especially when the original is considered a classic. It is sad that with these days' shortage of originality, even a seemingly talented director such as Kimberly Peirce, succumbs to the commercial appeal of movie-making in the sole interest of monetary gain resulting in watered-down quality. Well, I'm not even sure if this movie will make its money back, given the mediocrity in all aspects of its quality. But then again, there are a lot of junks out there that make tons of money. All the efforts for the reimagining, whether it be an attempt to create a franchise or sequel or to modernize the narrative has totally undermined the essence of this otherwise compelling story. The destructiveness of social isolation, religious fanaticism, BULLYING, to name a few, underlined in Stephen King's novel were in no way conveyed effectively in this movie. There is a lack of connection in Moretz's performance and  she is unconvincing as a socially deprived and awkward girl. Julianna Moore as always delivers a competent performance.  But she can only carry the movie so far. As talented as Moretz is, she is a miscast for this movie.  As such, the movie is moderately entertaining at best.

Disclaimer: this movie can prove to be "scarrie" for those who are not a fan of the horror genre in general. For those of us who are, at least for me, this movie was everything but scary. First of all, when I heard that Chloe Moretz will be taking the role of Carrie, I was afraid that she might not be able to pull it off. In fact, the only thing I was pleased to hear was that Julianne Moore will be playing Carrie's mother. She is a great choice for the role but the way she handled it, as well as everything else about this movie is - over the top. I could sense the idea of wanting to make a good remake of a classic, but in the end they just missed it... Chloe Moretz is a very good, promising young actress, I don't even wanna talk about acting abilities of Julianne Moore, but they just didn't seem real here. What makes the original Carrie truly disturbing is that it's really slow paced. In its essence, it's a drama about a teenage girl that is being deprived of an ordinary teenage life and experiences that come with it due to her fanatically religious and psychologically extremely questionable mother, to put it lightly. And yes, the plot is pretty much the same and everything, but the general feel is that they rushed it. As I said, everything is over the top, the acting is exaggerated, the relationships between the characters are unconvincing, but it's biggest flaw is that you KNOW what's coming. You have Carrie doing her telekinesis stunts from the very beginning. It's almost as if she was practicing this skill from waaaaaay back, making pencils float around the room, flying the bread over to the toaster - you know, the usual stuff. So when the real thing was supposed to happen, the x was out of the equation making it quite frustrating to watch. It seems to me that, to make a remake of such a classic film you need to put so much thought and effort into every little detail to make it at least convincing enough, if you're not aiming to top the original. This movie seemed like someone got the idea "hey let's make a remake of some classic horror movie... hmmm... which one should we pick... the Exorcist? no, that's to heavy. hey, how about Carrie? Sure! it has a young girl as a lead, we sure have plenty of those, and there's a mother - oh, no, don't tell me? are you thinking what I'm thinking? JULIANNE freakin' MOORE!" And off they went with their brilliant idea and messed it all up. It was to hasty, it was thoughtless, unconvincing and at the end all I could to was to pick the flaws as I was comparing it to the original. I could go on and on about which aspects of the movie I disliked the most, instead I'll just give it a 4/10 and never watch it again. The 2013 version, at least.

To be honest, the 1976 version of Carrie was only great for that period. It's not hard to see how the audience reacted to the film back in the days, but now it's nothing more than an entertaining campy relic. The only thing that many would still be amazed is its iconic prom scene. Another adaptation could be a great idea, especially for this generation when the context of the story has become more relevant. Unfortunately, it seems everyone behind this new version can't let go of the past and the ambition leans more on recapturing the best moments of the original. However, solid filmmaking and great cast makes the film watchable. It's almost like the same movie, but with people using modern technology and CGI death scenes. But the rest, it's difficult to know what else is the difference.

While fans will always defend the De Palma version, a remake is reasonable. Bullying has become a serious subject, and sometimes the bullied fights back ending up doing something worse. Those real life incidents resembles so much in this classic story, but the film wasn't so focused at that point until the end. Although we get to see more of Carrie being curious about her special abilities and Margaret's briefest backstories, which are interesting addition to the plot, that didn't make up enough to show its bigger picture. Again, the movie is more fond to its campiness. It at least gives a bit of satisfaction to those who crave for horror violence. The famous prom scene has found some inventive ways to kill its characters, despite of CGI.

The direction has its own style which works throughout. If there's anything else elevated, then that's most likely the performances. From the original, most of the cast (aside of Sissy Spacek) were probably too broad and sort of hammed it up. It's from the 70's, sure, but then we need a more credible and darker depiction of high school. Chloe Grace Moretz gives a genuine intimidation and eventual natural madness to the character. Julianne Moore is the improvement among. She manifests the pain beneath Margaret White's fanaticism, which is quite compelling.

The best advice to see Carrie is to not be familiar with the other adaptations, because the existence of those kind of affected the surprises, though I wished the film stepped forward more on its message to make it feel distinct than the camp that made this story such an icon. Overall, it's neither inferior nor superior compared to the original; it's all straightforward remake with modern time elements. Despite of being disappointing, Carrie is still an entertaining film. It's a great story anyway, and giving it a second look with a different vision might be alright. In the end, it's a needless re-adaptation than we thought it would be.

Some might remember this for it's viral marketing (putting a woman with powers into a café as a teaser to this was almost geniuses) or for the fact that it tried to recreate a classic horror movie. Whatever your point is or was coming into this, you will see a very solid horror movie that updated a classic and took it into the current time. There are themes explored here, that weren't touched upon in the original, which is a smooth move.

Other than that Moretz delivers one strong lead performance. If you know the original or have read the description you will know where this is heading. It won't spoil too much or take too much away from it though, because it is well directed. It might be too neat in places, but overall this does have punches and it's not afraid to deliver them. Overall not as good as the classic, but way better than one could expect it to be