Review of Carrie (2013) by Quincytheodore — 13 Nov 2013

In a partly unnecessary remake, Carrie has lost some of its dread and now looks terribly dismal instead of frightening. With the change, and also Chloe Morets as the leading actress, it seems this version is trying to invoke more sympathy to relatable case of bullying than to scare the audience with terror, which in its credit, works decently well. The talents give relatively good performance, although some of the script and characterization are muddled with exaggeration. The movie barely offers anything in term of novelty as it follows the source firmly, furthermore the plot is highly predictable and very 90s, in the end Carrie feels like a mild psychology thriller at best.

Chloe Moretz as the titular abused girl is the embodiment of a dejected teen. It's nigh impossible to not feel compassionate towards her as she pleads and cries. This is strange since Carrie had somber tone in her, audience would feel apprehension, compared to that Chloe looks rather more innocent. She delivers more empathy inducing scenes and actually makes viewers cheer for her. If it's an intended objective of the movie, it's fairly effective.

The role of creepy and misguidedly religious mother falls into Julianne Moore. She does a good job of setting unnerving sense of inescapable mentally threatening parent. It's not quite as scary, although it is disturbing. Relationship between her and the daughter is a strange, an affectionately insane one. The rest of the cast is mixed bag. Antagonist role of Chris (Portia Doubleday) is very unlikely to jump from high school prank to homicide attempt in one leap.

Sue (Gabriella Wilde) is plain weird, it seems that there could be more interactions between her and Carrie, perhaps to offer more complex friendship plot, instead of exclusively apologetic distant gazes and failure to communicate. The movie's gym teacher, Desjardin (Judy Greer) has crude yet protective sense, she's a more youthful authority figure who is comfortable in high school environment, but her role seems a bit limited.

The film is marred by a few unintentionally funny moments, and honestly the latter part is much more timid than most horror movies. Looking at Carrie discovering her power and becoming the telekinesis menace to society can be mistaken with X-men gone wrong. Some scenes are meant to be dramatic, but ultimately the closing feels anticlimactic. Aside from the tingling sense of eerie parental guidance and the unsettling corruption of innocence, Carrie is missing intense suspense; even its jump scares are juvenile.

Despite the use of more relevant topic of bullying, great talents behind it, and the same ridiculous amount of blood, Carrie is merely a toned down dull rework of old movie.