Natalie Stendall’s Film Review: Carrie

Stephen King’s iconic first novel returns as a film once again, this time starring Kick-Ass’ Chloe Grace Moretz as the repressed teenager whose telekinetic power is unleashed when she is pushed too far by her bullying classmates and oppressive mother.

Directed by Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry), this is a bloody interpretation of the supernatural horror that relies too much on gore to provide its shocks.

The script from Lawrence D. Cohen, of the original 1976 Carrie film, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Big Love and Glee series writer), opens on Carrie’s mother, Margaret (Julianne Moore), writhing in pain on bloody bed sheets.

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Crying out in fear of dying from cancer, she is, unknowingly, giving birth.

King’s novels, with their detailed characters and thematic subtleties, are notoriously difficult to translate to screen.

Here, the abusive relationship between Carrie and her fanatical mother is awarded mere basic exploration as Margaret quotes - and invents - scripture about modesty and the inferiority of women.

Our first glimpse of Carrie is more convincing. Self conscious and uncomfortable, she retreats to the corner of the school swimming pool otherwise filled with flirtatious, liberated teenage girls.

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Carrie’s very public and traumatic first menstruation in the girls’ shower room, leads to one of the film’s most powerful scenes of bullying and is both intense and potent.

Yet Cohen and Sacasa’s attempt to bring this story into the twenty-first century with an internet video of the incident jars with the idea that a 17-year-old could be so ignorant about the facts of life in the internet age.

Supporting characters, from Carrie’s persecutors Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday) and Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) to regretful bully Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde), are fleetingly examined, leaving the story feeling weak around the edges. Moretz wades in with a robust performance given the script’s deficiencies, but disappointingly gives in to the hunched shoulders and tilted head stance of typical horror movies as the film reaches its conclusion.

Its a problem that emanates from Carrie’s very dramatic opener.

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The chanting, screeching and pleading of the first act, followed by Carrie’s seeming ease in developing her powers, leaves its cast with nowhere to go as the film’s drama escalates.

Multiple action replays of the film’s most iconic scene add little to its significance or power to shock.

Feeble in comparison with King’s groundbreaking and compelling novel, Carrie relies on blood and gore rather than character to drive itself forward. Fans of the book will be disappointed while newcomers may find intrigue in the bones of this fascinating plot despite its flimsy execution.

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 100 minutes

Verdict: 2/5