Review of Carrie (2013) by Andrew W — 22 Feb 2014

I just watched the 2013 remake of Carrie and I have to say I need to see the original film again. No plans to re-read the short novel on which all this was based (there was a 2002 TV movie remake too), but just based on this, a few comments.

Bravo Julianne Moore. Bravo Chloë Grace Moretz. Bravo Ansel Elgort. Script, meh. Direction, too quick-paced. Feasibility problems: Carrie has grown wise and sees past her mother's fanaticism...speaks out against it quite coherently, but can't tell a friend from an ally.

Gratuitous violence just like in the original. Same hack Stephen King plot piece that seems to be in everything he does, or at least did in his early novels: have the bad guy mercilessly kill an animal to show us just how evil s/he is.

(The worst one I read was in the novel The Dead Zone, which was otherwise actually pretty good). When you can see a writer using a writing tool from a million miles a way, that's a weakness in the writing.

But I digress. The movie was too thin, though certainly entertaining. Good, modern soundtrack (I mean the real soundtrack, not the incidental songs we hear at the prom, which are fine, but incidental).

An opportunity for real atmospherics was missed here, as was any chance of character development (or even depth to begin with).