Movie Review: Carrie (2013)

Chloe Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday and Ansel Elgort star in this movie.

My kids were in bed at a reasonable hour last night and, even after watching one of our television shows, my wife and I had time to watch a movie. At first, I wasn’t really sure what that movie would be. However, we came across the 2013 remake of Carrie on Netflix and decided to give that a try.

With very few exceptions, I’m normally not a huge fan of horror movie remakes because they very rarely offer any sort of improvement over the original. And, as a result of that, I didn’t have my expectations set very high with this particular film. As it turns out, I was only partially correct when it came to this movie. As expected, it wasn’t considerably different from the 1976 version. However, it still turned out to be better than expected.

One thing I liked about this movie, in particular, was the modernized twists that were thrown in. It wasn’t enough that Carrie (Moretz) was bullied in the girl’s locker room, the bullies had to take a video of it and post it on the internet too, something that made the infamous incident even worse.

Another thing that really impressed me about this film was Moore’s performance as Carrie’s mother. Carrie, because of the bullying and torment she goes through, is more of a victim and, as a result of that, while she’s powerful, she also isn’t overly scary. Moore’s performance compensates for that because she manages to pull off a character that is mentally unstable and prone to violence. But, at the same time, there was still an overall feeling that she really did love her daughter and, ultimately, only wanted to protect her. That’s not something that is easy to pull off.

I also think Doubleday deserves some credit for her portrayal of Carrie’s main tormentor, Chris. She took the character to a whole new level and, instead of just being a jealous bully, she seemed mentally unstable to the point I would expect her to be a future serial killer.

My only real complaint about this movie has to be the ending, which I think was considerably tamer than the original’s ending (a scene that still has me feeling nervous whenever I’m around graves).  Given the fact this movie had the benefit of better special effects, I was a bit let down by the fact they didn’t use them to their advantage and end the film with something that would have more of an impact.

While Moretz did a decent job, I do think Sissy Spacek made a better Carrie overall and, mostly because of that, I still prefer the 1976 original. However, as far as remakes go, this film does exceed expectations and is worth watching at least once.

My Grade: B