Carrie [2013] - Review

Dir: Kimberly Pierce

It's important that, should we have any, a film critic is clear about their biases and how they might effect their response to a given film, so, to be clear... I love Carrie.  I love the book, but I especially love Brian DePalma's film, which would be in any conversation I might have about the ten best horror films or the ten best teen films ever made.  In preparing to see this remake I also looked at the 2002 TV version of the story and, while it had significant issues, I found much to enjoy in it.  I suppose this could colour my response to this remake in one of two ways: it could have made it easier, after all, here is a story I know works and I know I respond to.  On the other hand it's also a story I respond very strongly to in one particular version.

There was another reason to be hopeful, director Kimberly Pierce, who has shown herself, especially with Boys Don't Cry, to be an effective chronicler of the lives of people violently rejected by their own society, which, at an essential level, is at least partly what Carrie is about.  She's also a very different filmmaker from Brian DePalma, and it seemed an intriguing choice to have a female filmmaker approach what is also a story catalysed by a character going, biologically, from childhood to womanhood.  

It is, then, a crushing disappointment to have to say that watching this Carrie was, for me, like watching a competent singer deliver one of my favourite songs on The X Factor: it's not that it's terrible, more that they bring nothing new to it and you're always thinking of another, much better, version of the same thing and wishing that was what you were watching and listening to.

It's not good practice, in general, to spend reviews of remakes simply comparing the two (or more) films, but Carrie actively works against you in this respect, because it is so close to DePalma's film for so much of its running time.  This was also true, though to a lesser degree, of the TV version, but there at least in between the swathes of dialogue that seemed to have been cut and pasted from the original film's screenplay there were some flashes of wit and new scenes that added something to the telling of the story.  That's really not true here, instead what we get are slight rewordings of original scenes and the odd contemporary reference jammed in (YouTube, that's a modern thing, right?)

This, however, pales next to the major problem: the casting and performances.  Chloe Grace Moretz is clearly a talented young woman, among the best actresses in her age group, however, she is also an actress who works best within a certain character type and has a particular persona that comes across on screen.  Ever since (500) Days of Summer there has been a no bullshit feel about Moretz and her characters and an inherent strength beyond her years has been a major part of most of her characters.  In this way she seemed to me an odd piece of casting as Carrie White, the wallflower who blooms at prom, so it has proven: Moretz is horribly miscast, especially in the first half of the film.  

This  miscasting is another aspect in which the film almost forces you to draw comparisons.  Brian DePalma cast an actress much older than the character, Sissy Spacek not only looked young but, with her mousy beauty and the way she appears to shrink in the role, seemed like exactly the kind of person who would try, and fail, to simply melt into the background of high school.  Moretz is much younger than Spacek was, younger even than the character, she's also a much more obvious, much more Hollywood beauty.  Of course it's not that attractive people aren't rejected or bullied, but it just doesn't seem to fit Carrie, at least not the Carrie of the first hour of the film.  The only concession the film makes to dressing Moretz down is to give her unkempt hair and little make up for the first hour, but that's not the crux of the problem.  The major issue is that when she's playing the shy Carrie, trying to disappear into the background, Moretz always seems to be acting.  The way she holds herself, the whispered voice, it all feels contrived.  If Carrie's character should feel contrived at any point then it's at the prom, Moretz gets it all wrong.

If the fact that the central performance doesn't work can't be entirely blamed on the actress, that's less true of many of the supporting cast, who do have rather more single note parts to work with.  Wooden spoon winner is Portia Doubleday as Chris Hargensen (another way in which, amusingly, this film echoes DePalma's).  Doubleday totally overplays Chris' bitchy nature, though she's not helped by an extension to the scene where she tries to get the other girls to join her in rebelling against detention.  Nancy Allen overplayed the role too, but by taking it even more over the top Doubleday renders the character little more than an evil cartoon of a high school girl and if even the bitchiness in Carrie doesn't feel realistic, what hope for the rest of the film?

Most of the rest of the young cast just bland their way through the film.  The fashions and hairstyles of the 1976 film may now be laughably dated, but at least you can tell those characters apart.  Here Gabriella Wilde and Ansel Elgort, as Sue Snell and Tommy Ross, prove unmemorable replacements for Amy Irving and William Katt and you shouldn't expect Alex Russell to go on to the big things that John Travolta did after he played Billy Nolan.

Some of this could be forgiven had Kimberly Pierce managed to bring something fresh, a new perspective, to this frequently told story.  There are attempts at updates; Ms Desjardin faces, offscreen, some consequences for her rather unprofessional approach to teaching (within the opening half hour she's slapped one student and sworn at another group) and there is a good idea, though rather hamsfisted execution, in an added scene that sees Chris Hargensen and her Father appeal the refusal of her prom tickets.

The most notable addition comes in the opening, which shows Margaret (Julianne Moore) giving birth to Carrie and only just holding back from murdering her with a pair of scissors.  This is actually effective, and promises an intense take on the Mother/Daughter relationship, but unfortunately this becomes yet another aspect in which the film falls into the pattern of copying DePalma but adding a few new digital effects.  Pierce's take on the material seems to be to treat it as a supervillain origin story, and this leads to some of the film's worst moments.  Carrie's powers are, throughout, much more emphasised and much more willful than they have ever been depicted as before.  This was something that really didn't work for me.  For instance, in the scene where Carrie tells her mother that she's going to prom, the original has a subtle menace thanks to Carrie's soft but firm tone and her (and our) growing knowledge of her powers, but the threat is barely even stated.  Here Carrie uses her powers on her Mother in this scene, in a way that makes it hokey rather than menacing and her increased violence, here and in other pre-prom scenes, undermines any sympathy we might have for Carrie.

The prom scene itself presents a daunting challenge to any filmmaker or actress who wants to reapproach it, because DePalma's handling of it and Spacek's blood covered look are both undeniably iconic images of horror cinema.  It really doesn't come off for Pierce and Moretz.  Their version of Carrie, a sort of vengeful puppeteer, is too basic.  The film never really succeeds in getting into Carrie's head in the way that DePalma managed viscerally with the montage of people laughing at Carrie (which I've always seen as at least half imagined).  In keeping with the supervillain narrative Carrie is all but totally unrestrained, but the CGI assisted carnage lacks the shock value it held in the other versions of the story because it's a small step in from what she's done in the rest of the film, rather than an explosion of rage.

This isn't the worst recent horror remake, actually in one aspect it it does come close to matching the original: Judy Greer is perfect casting as Ms Desjardin, she has an inherent warmth as a screen presence and gives a customarily excellent performance, but overall it's not a good, or even an especially interesting, film.  It would almost be a relief if Carrie 2013 were worse, because then I'd be able to get annoyed about it, but I can't even really do that.  Ultimately this isn't a truly terrible film, just a poor and deadeningly pointless one whose major achievement is that it makes you reflect once again on how great Brian DePalma's film was.

Lost Horrors: Carrie [2002]

In this series I will be looking at horror films that have fallen through the cracks; the obscure, the underseen, the underrated, the lost.

As the latest version of Carrie is due to be released in the UK in just a few weeks I thought it would be a good idea to kick this column off with a look at the mostly forgotten TV Movie from 2002, which was apparently supposed to kick off a Carrie TV series.

This largely forgotten version feels not so much like a remake of Brian DePalma's film as it does a modern (well modern in 2002, which is surprisingly old fashioned now, as this is a high school without smartphones or even YouTube) adaptation of Stephen King's novel.  Writer Bryan Fuller and director David Carson retain a few things that DePalma jettisoned, take a different tone with some of the performances and update some of the dialogue intelligently.  Unfortunately this is not to say that the film is a total success, but it's seldom less than interesting.

The first place that this Carrie really scores is in the casting of the title role.  Sissy Spacek is indelible as Carrie White, making the part a mountain for any actress to climb.  Angela Bettis, who was cast on the strength of her work in May though Carrie would be seen first by the public, is ideal casting.  She's not Spacek and doesn't attempt to copy her, but Bettis shares some inherent qualities that are integral to the role.  Make no mistake, Angela Bettis is a strikingly good looking young woman, but her beauty has a quiet, almost mousy, quality that easily blends in to the background, especially when you set her against the likes of Emilie DeRavin's dolled up Chris Hargensen.  You can believe that Bettis' Carrie would be ignored at high school, were it not for the fact that she is strange and that her peers are aware of her restrictive upbringing with her extremely conservative religious mother (played here by Patricia Clarkson).  Bettis' look also works in another way; her transformation into the pretty girl who goes to prom is both credible and a real change of look.

Of course Bettis' performance goes much more than skin deep, and in this way she's also very different from her predecessor.  Spacek's Carrie always seems scared, but there is something different about Bettis in the role; an anger that seems ever present and a knowledge that that anger can be destructive.  This leads to a subtly different take on the scenes of telekinesis.  Spacek's Carrie seems to gradually gain control over her powers, but we never feel that from Bettis.  Even at the prom she seems overtaken, frozen by her powers.  

An additional scene in which Sue Snell (a creditable performance from Kandyse McClure) helps Carrie pick out a lipstick for the dance adds colour and a little more social nous to the character.  There are a few additions and changes like this, and most are welcome.  New dialogue when Chris Hargensen's plan for revenge against Carrie is first mooted is both period appropriate and funny “We should have a rule: If they do something in a Freddie Prinze Jr. movie, we're not allowed to do it in real life.”  Even better is the extending of the bullying of Carrie, which takes the 'plug it up' moment and – though it depicts it less explicitly – makes it more public and just as cruel.  There are nice little moments scattered throughout the film that seperate it from the DePalma version and make Carrie a subtly different character (her line about breasts to her mother is also extended and works really well).

There are two big changes.  One works reasonably well, the other almost brings the whole film crashing down.  Carrie, the novel, is one of Stephen King's most unconventionally structured; written as if pieced together from reports about the prom incident and what went before it.  This film attempts to reflect that by having survivors interviewed by the Police.  It's a nice idea, and gives the film a different feel from the original, but the internal logic of the structure isn't always maintained and it does rely on some patchy performances when it cuts away from Kandyse McClure.  The ending, on the other hand, is laugh out loud ludicrous, so bad it nearly retrospectively destroys what was good about the film in the first place.  I'll just say that the last five minutes attempt to set up a TV series that would have co-starred Sue Snell and leave you to imagine the plot contortions and how awful they are.

This version of Carrie is somewhat schizophrenic in its quality.  You can enjoy the coiled menace of Patricia Clarkson's performance as Margaret White, which takes a radically different approach to the more nakedly unhinged Piper Laurie to fine effect, but at the same time the cramped framing – frequently in close up – and general try too hard feeling of David Carson's direction can be off putting.  To his credit Carson doesn't imitate Brian DePalma, but the effects he sometimes tries look cheesy and there is just a sense that he's overegging the pudding through his direction because TV rules mean that he can't show much violence.  There are other problems too, notably with the supporting cast and especially with Jesse Cadotte, who is terrible as Billy Nolan, and makes you long for something as restrained as John Travolta's hammy turn in the original film.

I only discovered that this version of Carrie existed because I'm a fan of Angela Bettis, but does it deserve to be dug up?  I think so.  It's a long, long way from perfect and it can be a frustrating watch because you want to shout at the director and the editor, especially in the last five minutes.  However, the leading performances are excellent and the film distinguishes itself enough from the DePalma version that it does feel like it can stand on its own.  At the very least it's an interesting curio for fans of Bettis, Clarkson and King.