Horror Movie Month: Carrie

The Stars: Chloe Grace Moretz, Ansel Elgort, Judy Greer, Julianne Moore

The Plot: A shy, strange teenager is bullied by a group of her classmates while also discovering she has kinetic powers. Needless to say, a horrible prank at the school prom climaxes in a bloodbath.

I'm going to go ahead and be brutally honest for a minute: Growing up, I was bullied to nearly my breaking point and around this time I discovered the original Carrie, starring Sissy Spacek. While I didn't exactly want to kill any of my tormentors, Carrie did sort of become my hero, because how I wished and wished I had powers that would make these jerks suffer. So, the original Carrie is sort of special to me. I guess it's hard to remake a movie that is so iconic, but I'm also not completely against it. I mean, we get different versions of Shakespeare every few years, so why should Stephen King be any different, really? The problem with remaking a movie, however, is that everyone knows exactly what happens. It takes away from any sort of anticipation. So, you better do something really special with the movie in order to compensate. Director Kimberly Peirce does nothing at all special here. The movie doesn't really get good until the last twenty minutes or so (and star Moretz looks so good and creepy during the scenes when she is so covered with blood, even her eyes are red). Up until then, it's just a boring movie that we've all seen before. I was most worried about Moretz. I know Spacek was way too old to play a teenager in the original Carrie, and Moretz is only 16 or whatever, but she's also too pretty and perfect to ever know what being bullied actually feels like. However, I was sort of impressed with her. She does an absolutely great job as Carrie. In fact, the acting all around is superb, especially from new find Elgort (this is his first movie and he's following it up with two super anticipated YA adaptations: Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars), and Moore, of course, who steals the entire movie. But did anyone expect any less from Moore as Margaret White?

The Scares: Carrie was never a scary movie, per se. It was more a suspense movie, I guess. Although the original movie did have one really great scare. This version, unfortunately, doesn't use that moment, or even re-imagine it in any way.

The Body Count: So many, some more deserving than others!

The Grade: C