Carrie

I first read Carrie towards the end of my high school senior year.  I was at a park and it only took me a day to get through the entire thing.  It wasn’t the first Stephen King novel I read, but it was the first to stir me so emotionally that it changed not only the way I view relationships, but how I look at my own childhood.

The novel is about Carrie White, an abused high school senior with telekinetic powers, and after a series of horrendous events from her mother and classmates, she slaughters her high school and a good portion of the town.  Carrie is a monster, but never is she the villain.  That goes to Chris Hargensen and Carrie’s mom, Margaret.  Both are bullies and Carrie is an easy target for all sorts of abuse.

I sympathize with Carrie because from elementary school through junior high, I was Carrie.  Not so much the home abuse, but at school, life was awful.  I remember a long series of humiliation, taunts, and spoiling of any good thing I thought I had.  There were only three or four who actively sought to make me miserable, but it was enough to throw me off, and considering how awkward I was, I was generally ostracized from everyone.  Since reading Carrie, I’ve often wondered what would have happened if things hadn’t changed for me in high school.  I highly doubt I would have tried to take out my school, but I can relate to her rage.  After a long series of abuses, something breaks and you search for release.

Considering how much I love the story, there was no way I wasn’t going to see the Carrie remake in theaters.  I not only like it better than the 1976 version, I almost like it better than the book.

The casting is superb; Chloë Grace Moretz is luminous as Carrie.  Even when she goes murderous, it was impossible for me not to still love her, and Julianne Moore is incredibly frightening as Carrie’s mom.  I don’t know if anybody has captured insanity better than her.

There are moments of cheesiness, mostly at the end when they fall into the cheap horror tricks of one more scare just to make the audience jump.  Carrie’s mom should have just stayed dead after being stabbed in the heart.  Making her gasp on for another half-minute was ludicrous, and the final scene at Carrie’s grave is as pointless as the hand coming out the ground in the original.

But these are nitpicks.  I was impressed, very impressed, with everything else.  I dreaded the shower scene; the 1976 version made that opening sequence feel lurid, almost like it was encouraging the audience to ogle high school girls.  The 2013 version takes pains to avoid this and instead focuses on making it the truly frightening and traumatic start to Carrie’s story, as it should be.

Updating the story to fit in with today’s technology was also a clever move.  It never felt intrusive but developed Chris’s awful nature and even made the prom night more believable.  And the prom rampage was, of course, amazing.  I wish this movie great success.