It was the first Stephen King book I read, though many were out by the time I was old enough to read Stephen King. I always liked it. I've seen both of the other movie versions, and liked them.
So, I had to go see it.
On the question of, "Why did they need to make it again?", I'm afraid I'll be very disappointing and say, "Why not?" It's a good story. I've seen and read a lot of Cinderellas (including Carrie), and a lot of Sleeping Beauties. I've lost track of the "Little Red Riding Hoods" that I've read. Why wouldn't someone else tell Carrie? All three versions have something to offer. None of them really reaches the level of the book, but then, I should probably give up on the idea of Hollywood being able to properly adapt a book.
This particular one just updates the source material to 2013. So, how did it do?
I'll break it up by the classic five elements of fiction.
Character
The characters themselves are pretty much the characters known from the book, though some names have changed. ("Helen" was barely current in 1974, for instance (though I do know young Helens), and has become Heather, which weirdly just places it around the '80s; the Thibodeaux twins have also been given updated names.) Chris Hargensen is still the alpha bitch, Sue Snell is still the misguided do-gooder, Miss Desjardins is still the sympathetic gym teacher. (Though the 2002 version is the only one that pronounced it properly -- day-zhar-DAN; this one goes with Dess-jar-dins, which I guess is probably what it would eventually turn into. The 1976 version just gave up and called her "Miss Collins.")
Carrie and her mother are still the primary figures in the story. Julianne Moore is much more restrained in her performance than other actresses I've seen in the part, though she comes out with a little scenery caught in her teeth. Chloe Grace Moretz, I think, does a good job with Carrie, and, being fifteen, certainly looks the part more than Spacek or Bettis did. (And no, Carrie was not supposed to be ugly in the book. The mean girls called her ugly, and after years of hearing it, she believed it, but the more disinterested characters, like Tommy, describe her as oddly pretty, with a bizarre and unsuccessful effort to hide it.) The relationship here hews closer to the book in its details, beginning with Carrie's birth as theorized in the novel.
The bully characters -- primarily Chris, Tina, and Billy -- are a bit flat. Billy gets back a little of his agency here, and what screen time he has, he fills pretty well, but never entirely manages to scare me. Chris going off on her "right" to attend her prom, and to bully Carrie... well, on the latter, they took the interesting tack of not having her so much indifferent and hateful as having her fully believe that there's nothing whatsoever wrong with what she did, and Carrie pretty much deserves what's coming to her. Chris believes herself to be the one wronged.
I think there was some shortchanging on background events. The scene with the Morton and Desjardins facing up to Mr. Hargensen didn't come off very well. The threat in the book to countersue on Carrie's behalf was much more effective than the little charade they give here, where they offer to let Chris off if she hands over her phone and proves there wasn't a video on it (more later on this). They both, basically, come off as very weak. The fact that none of the actors in the scene exactly commands the screen probably doesn't help.
Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) comes off pretty well. She's not quite as vague as the Amy Irving version or as badass as the Kandyse McClure version. Tommy gets the most credit here, actually taking actions on his own (as he did in the book), and both listening to Sue and not minimizing what she did. (He even gets his book line back about "What did Carrie White ever do to you?") This is handled nicely, and without changing the fact that he's clearly nuts about his girl. He even texts her during the prom to say he misses her.
So, good with the characters.
Plot
Not much to say about the plot. It's Carrie. Carrie is picked on, Carrie goes to the prom, there's pig's blood, then she goes on telekinetic rampage. I'd been led to believe that the end was some kind of weird tacked on bit of smarminess, but it wasn't. It was a change from the book, where Carrie seems to have caused Sue to miscarry, but the question of whether or not Sue was pregnant was definitely part of the story. And testifying in front of the White Commission forms a large part of the text. Granted, they soft-pedalled it, but I suspect that was about running out of time.
I was disappointed that they still haven't gotten around to the full destruction of Chamberlain -- the power lines in the streets, the townspeople all running around in their housecoats and slippers, Carrie praying in a church while the pews and hymnals fly around her... this is very well described in the book, and I was hoping that a big screen movie with a bigger budget wouldn't rush through it and just suggest in a couple of shots. Come on, people! These are money shots. I'll have to wait for the next version.
The build-up to Margaret's attack on Carrie is done pretty well, using the rule of three -- she first tries to kill her as an infant, then when she hears things moving around, then, well, prom night. The choice to use sharp objects to kill Margaret (per the 1976 version) rather than telekinetically stopping her heart (per the book) was disappointing. And I don't know why the order of events was changed. The drama of going out after that to destroy the roadhouses (along with Chris and Billy), then having the meeting with Sue in the middle of a field as she dies, was much better than just sticking them in the house and having Sue offer to help. Shrug. Not bad, but just not an interesting way to do it.
Setting
Here's the part that's most changed. Carrie, in this version, is a creature of 2013. I didn't think it was possible to top the horror of the bullying in the locker room, but Chris manages it by recording it on her cell phone and posting it to YouTube. This video is also played on the big screen at the prom while Carrie's standing there covered with blood. I like this addition. It adds to the sense that the psychological horror of "Blood Sport" is mirrored in the physical and supernatural horror of Prom Night. Unfortunately, it wasn't used as well as it could have been. Something like that would follow her everywhere, but she barely seems to know about it until it's shown at the prom. If it had gone viral (a review I read suggested that it had), she'd have been at the center of an extremely unwanted spotlight. It probably would have eaten up too much screen time if they'd done that, but a few nods to what a video like that would have done to her wouldn't have been amiss.
Other than the time setting, there were some weird choices with the physical setting. In fact, I can't tell what the setting is, exactly. The school appears to be in some kind of affluent downtown area (you can see fancy high rise buildings in the background when they're outside). It seems to be a very large school. The town they shoot seems kind of suburban, and Chris's house looks like a horrific suburban McMansion. But Carrie and her mom still seem to live on a small town street, Sue and Tommy go parking out in the country, and there's a pig farm in easy distance.
I don't understand the physical setting choices. The rural/small town setting isn't as important for Carrie as it is for some other King properties (Salem's Lot comes to mind), but much of the action is something that very much comes from a small town environment. Everyone being together in the same school since time out of mind is very small town. And come on -- kids who lived in the city or the 'burbs would break into a butcher shop for the pig's blood, not think about hauling themselves way out to Old Man Henty's farm to kill themselves a real pig. It's not a fatal flaw or a deal breaker, just kind of a headscratcher. I know more kids live in cities and suburbs than in small towns, but kids do still live out there in the hinterlands, and much of the action makes more sense in that context.
Theme
The theme is the same as ever -- someone pushed beyond endurance will eventually lash out. Unfortunately, we have not exactly learned this lesson in a few millennia of human history, and neither a bestselling novel nor any of the movies made from it are likely to change that.
Style
Only one of the three movies (the 2002, which was lovely up until the last fifteen minutes or so) has even tried to approach the epistolary style of the book. It's too bad -- it gave a much wider view of what was going on, and didn't ever lose sight of the center of the story. You get to see people's reactions who might not have been in the know, people who weren't close to anyone, but saw everything at a sidelong glance. You get to see how the story was pieced together by the White Commission, and how, in the end, they tried to pin everything on Sue, which is what explains why she's still mortally involved with Carrie so many years later (one of "excerpted books" is her tell-all, My Name Is Susan Snell). I'd guess it's harder to keep focus in a movie than in a book, but I'd still like to see someone succeed in this style of storytelling on the screen. I want to know if it can be done, even.
The style here is nothing to write home about. Lots of blood running through it, which fits with the book's symbolism, but actually overdoes it by a long way. By the time the pig's blood comes, you're kind of inured to it, or at least I was. Mostly, it's just competent directorial work. Nice job, nothing fancy.
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