Movie Review: "Carrie" (2013)

Movie: "Carrie"
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

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A shy, reclusive high school girl named Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz) leads a sheltered life, mainly at the hands of her religious zealot mother (Julianne Moore). She is relentlessly tormented by the other girls at her school. After she is finally teased too far and too much, Carrie unleashes her telekinetic powers during her senior prom, and nothing will ever be the same in her small town.

Let it be known that we do not see the point in a remake of this movie. Brian De Palma did a fantastic job on his own.
DON'T FIX WHAT AIN'T BROKEN.
The original still holds up today, so why tinker with it?

Does this movie work? Is it good?

NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

Anyone involved with this movie should be ashamed of themselves.

Even if we hadn't just watched the original, there are elements added to the remake that don't make any sense whatsoever and made us downright MAD.

Chloe Grace Moretz IS NOT, we repeat, IS NOT SISSY SPACEK. She is completely miscast in this film. Sissy Spacek was a dowdy, plain Jane type of person who only needed to use her wide-eyed creeptastic gaze to convey her emotions. Chloe Grace Moretz is far too popular for this movie. She does not encapsulate the role of Carrie at all. Even when filmmakers tried to "dowdy" her down, it didn't work. As we said in the review for "Kick-Ass 2," SHE NEEDS TO SHUT HER GODFORSAKEN MOUTH when she's asking. She spends too much time biting her lip, opening her mouth when it's not necessary, and making weird facial expressions that are goofy, not scary. Julianne Moore, while fabulous in general, has taken the character of Margaret, an overbearing and overprotective Bible-beating mother and turned her into an absolutely batshit crazy self-mutilating psychopath who is a social recluse. Again, was adding the element of self-mutilation necessary?
-SIDEBAR-
Was this in the book and something we missed the first time around? We don't think so, so why even include it in the first place??? We get the need for Kimberly Peirce to distance herself as a director from the original movie, but why do so with completely unnecessary plot points like this??? We get it, added scenes and distancing, but THESE ADDITIONS DO NOT NEED TO BE THERE. AT ALL.

Another problem with the new plot is that Peirce has taken many characters and turned them on their heads to where they actually lose their original impact. Chris' boyfriend Billy Nolan (Alex Russell) is changed from a bumbling drunk goof-off being manipulated by his girlfriend, to a strong driving force of the attack on Carrie, as well as a complete criminal and possible murderer. By changing Billy Nolan as a character, this movie changes Chris as a character, too, making her the manipulatED rather than the manipulatOR.

The tension from the original movie is completely gone, finito, nada, nothing there. It is replaced by a bunch of CGI objects being moved about the screen while Moretz stands on stage looking constipated while waving her hands in the air. The final climactic scene, well, about the last 25 minutes of the movie are a complete let-down because the details are changed so much that the ending becomes ineffective. Carrie almost seem vengeful in the remake, picking and choosing which victims to kill and how, instead of being nondiscriminatory with her telekinesis.

We know Moretz and Moore are capable of better. Director Kimberly Peirce had a lot going against her since the original "Carrie" is such a classic; even though it's outdated, its effectiveness is not. It seems too similar to the original movie to say it's a more faithful adaptation of the book. Maybe we just need to read it and see the differences for ourselves and reevaluate from there, but a lot of the additions to the remake that we have problems with come from modernizations, which would definitely not be in the book. Basing it off of the original movie, this is not a remake, it's a retelling.

We're still bitter, though.

Just watch this coffee shop prank/promotional video for the remake of "Carrie." You'll be better off, and richer since you didn't waste your money on this trainwreck.

PS: if you still think this movie is closer to the book, www.thatwasnotinthebook.com. We'll wait for our "thank you."

My Rating: 2/10
BigJ's Rating: 2/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%
Do we recommend this movie: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!