Review: Carrie
By Christine Petralia
Image courtesy of MGM
October 20, 2013
*Spoiler Alert*
In this third film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1974 novel, Chloe Grace Moretz takes on the title role of Carrie, while Julianne Moore plays her crazy mother. Both were pretty amazing at capturing the characters in hopefully what King wanted when he wrote the novel.
When Carrie’s mother gave birth to her, she thought she was dying of cancer. Convinced she was conceived in sin, she almost killed Carrie after she had her, but stopped herself. Seventeen years later, Carrie, after having been home schooled for many years, is an outcast as a senior in high school. One day after gym class while showering, she gets her first period. Having no clue what was going on, she freaks out and thinking she’s bleeding to death. And high school girls doing what they do best, instead of helping her, they throw tampons and pads at her, all while filming the incident and chanting ‘plug it up.’ Gym teacher Rita Desjardin (Judy Greer) comes to the rescue, helping Carrie and urging her to give up the names of her tormenters.
After her mother picks her up from school, she brings her home and convinced she will sin now that the blood has come, she locks Carrie in her ‘prayer room.’ While trying to get out, Carrie makes a huge dent in the door. Pretty soon, she realizes she has telekinetic powers. Back at school, she does a lot of research to hone her powers and ‘control’ them. Meanwhile, one of the girls from the locker room, Chris (Portia Doubleday), puts the video of the incident on YouTube and ultimately gets suspended from school and forced to skip prom. She tries to get her friends to back her, but they don’t want to side with her, specifically her bestie Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde). Sue actually feels bad for what happened, and she ‘punishes’ herself by telling her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort), to take Carrie to the prom instead.
Carrie worries that Tommy asking her is all a big joke, but he convinces her that it’s not. However, the notion of going to prom where her daughter will sin, doesn’t sit well with her mother. But Carrie uses her newfound powers to scare her mother off for a while. Until the night of the prom, when her mom goes nuts again, so Carrie locks her in the prayer closet for the night.
Carrie and Tommy have a great time. But, of course, as most know, it doesn’t end well. Chris and her boyfriend collect a bunch of pig’s blood and rig the vote for prom king and queen so that Carrie and Tommy will win. Right before the bucket falls, Chris texts Sue, who is at home, to tell her what is going on. Sue shows up at the prom, only to be escorted out by Desjardin. And after the pig’s blood falls, the video plays of the locker room incident. Carrie uses her powers to wreck havoc on the entire school, eventually setting it up in flames. After flying out, she goes after Chris and her boyfriend.
She then heads home, wanting to forget the entire event. But her mother is waiting for her, and as they go to pray, her mother tries to kill her. In the end, Carrie uses her powers to kill her mother. And in realizing what she’s done, she collapses her entire house on top of the two of them. But not before Sue tries to help Carrie. Right before forcing Sue out of the house, Carrie tells her she’s expecting a girl.
In a brief aftermath scene, Sue is seen in court explaining that Carrie was a special girl with powers. Then she heads to place a flower on Carries tombstone, which has been vandalized with “Carrie White burns in hell.” Her tombstone cracks right before the credits roll.
I really think that Moore captured the essence of craziness of Carrie’s mother. And Moretz did an amazing job as Carrie. Overall, I thought the film was just OK. It stuck pretty close to the original, which was good, but I guess it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I think at the time the original came out, it was scary because of the nature of the content. But nowadays, with zombies and vampires and everything else, I wouldn’t consider this a horror film. It’s essentially just your typical crazy teen film. But it does have you rooting for Carrie, as the mean girls were pretty dead on.
In the end though, you might just want to wait to see this out of the theater. The special effects were pretty good, but probably not worth the price of a ticket nowadays.
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