Having said this, there are some avenues that this ‘reimagining’ explores for the modern audience, that stray from Brian De Palma’s Carrie, but ultimately this film – directed by Kimberley Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) – stays faithful to King’s novel.
A huge focus of this film for the modern audience, is to highlight the darker side of how Carrie’s generation uses social media to bully and intimidate. This concept is nothing new, however. One horror film that immediately comes to mind in using this concept, is 2011’s Scream 4, where social media features so heavily, it becomes a parody of itself.
Post: I just murdered someone… Someone Else ‘Likes This’.
The opening scene of the film shows Carrie being humiliated by her peers, who film everything using their mobile phones and uploading the footage to YouTube. This is something that you could imagine happening in this day and age. Other features of social media as a tool for intimidation can be seen when her classmates are posting lies about Carrie online, and we see the psychological impact that cyber-bullying has upon her.
As a social commentary of the times, this film does deserve some merit. It does raise awareness of such instances that so often do take place, only to be reported in the media when it results in tragic consequences.
As can be expected, this film has been unfavourably compared with De Palma’s offering from 1976. In an age where good old, classic horror films are being remade for fun - and money - Moretz has now starred in no less than three horror remakes. It is extremely difficult to convince the older generations of horror viewers to put aside their emotional attachment to the original film they grew up with and embrace its newer offering – regardless of how good it actually may be. This is no different. At times, you feel that it is almost a ‘shot-for-shot’ remake - something that did not go down too well with Gus Van Sant’s Psycho at the very start of the current remake craze.
For the majority of us, Carrie will forever be Sissy Spacek covered in pig’s blood while she shoots those glaring eyes in red-lit, split-screen close-up, dishing out punishment to those that mock her.
Ultimately, both films and the novel they are based on are a tale about growing up and awakening – mentally and sexually – and how teenagers deal with the pressures of society by dishing out and receiving the abuse. This film only serves to portray how it has become more brutal now than it was in the 1970s.
Review: Carrie (2013)
By Andreas Charalambous - 29th November 2013
Forty years after the Stephen King novel of the same name was published, the modern remake of the film Carrie has today reached UK cinema screens. The modern-day adaptation stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Carrie, and Julianne Moore as her deeply religious mother.
For those familiar with the novel or the original film – starring Sissy Spacek – this film revisits similar key themes in its narrative; The story of an isolated victim of bullying who discovers that she has the powers of telekinesis, which she ultimately uses to wreak her revenge on those who torment her.
This is essentially the same premise as the previous incarnation on the big screen, as well as the original novel, published in 1973 – so there are no particularly big spoilers here. Any spoilers that you may have needed to avoid, would have been revealed to you when watching the theatrical release trailer a few months back – watching the trailer for this film then, I was left wondering if there was actually any point in watching this film when it was eventually released.