Banned as reading material in many American schools, Carrie, actually carries a sobering message for bullies – make life hell for the freak and you could literally burn.   

The 2013 remake of the first of horror maestro Stephen King’s spine-tingling novels to be published, gets a needed update with cyber bullying being the predominant and relatable mode of teenage torture.

But whether this retelling succeeds like Baz Luhrmann’s creative reimagining of Romeo + Juliet, or the bomb of Gus Van Sant’s 1998 Psycho, which incidentally also starred Julianne Moore, remains to be seen. What’s undeniable is the draw of the story, which has been made into the original 1976 film adaptation, a sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), and a flopped 1988 Broadway musical in between.

In this latest iteration, Julianne Moore is cast as religious fanatic Margaret White, mother of the titular character. Margaret’s extreme puritan beliefs equate sex with filth and shame, and she’s determined that Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz) will be shielded from lustful thoughts and protected from boys. To achieve this, she brings Carrie up in an unreal world that further distances the shy, mousy misfit from her peers. A story about an outcast at the stage of life when a young person needs to fit in most, Carrie’s a tale you hear time and again about high school and its cruelty to anyone different.

Carrie’s naivete over her female body is clear when she panics seeing blood trickling from between her legs in the shower after gym class. She doesn’t know that menstruation happens to every girl, and her pleas and screams for help, are turned against her as popular girl, Chris (Portia Doubleday) leads the others the rest of the class in taunts of “Plug it up! Plug it up!” while pelting her with tampons.

Adding on to the traumatic experience, screenwriters Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa -the latter of whom also wrote for Glee- have updated it with today’s context, adding cell phones and online video sharing (Chris records the bullying and posts it online) to further amplify and make permanent a young woman’s humiliation.


As penance for what they did, the bullies are made by Ms Desjardin, their gym teacher, to run suicides, but upon refusing to follow orders, Chris is suspended from school and banned from their senior prom. Enraged, she plots with her boyfriend Billy (Alex Russell) ways to get back at Carrie.

As it climaxes to the 1-vengeful-woman massacre at the end, the film seems to go back in time, as it brings out special effects from the 90’s and cheap-looking sets that could have been dug out from 1976. The kind where falling debris that looked like large pebbles or small boulders are made from styrofoam. From there, the film takes on the same tack as most B-rate horrors, and yet when it ends in a bloodbath, the film doesn’t really disappoint because it’s a formula that’s known and loved.

While not as captivating as the wide-eyed Sissy Spacek in the 1976 cult classic, Moretz , who stared in the recent Kick-Ass sequel, gave a steady performance that gave Carrie a different feel. While Spacek’s Carrie, which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, was a little lost and vulnerable, Moretz’s was more confident.

As Margaret White, 2-time Golden Globe winner Julianne Moore brought to her character a quietly demented soul that scares you not with her screaming words, but with her soft deluded mutterings of the gospel and steely gaze. Together, Moretz and Moore bring to the table a captivating chemistry, that between their highly strung tension and tender moments, feel both strange and right., especially when White caresses Carrie while waiting to plunge a knife into her back.

When Carrie’s telekinetic powers, heightened as she becomes a woman with puberty, bring a new dynamic to their relationship that shifts how we feel about the mother-daughter pair, Moretz and Moore still give us a performance that will make you sit at the edge of your seat.  In a tension filled moments after Carrie comes into herself, we know that Carrie’s not going to take her mother’s abuse much longer.

Beside performances by the 2 leads, Judy Greer also stands out as helpful teacher Ms Desjardin.

Like many reboots, it’s hard to justify its existence if it doesn’t have its own voice or anything new to contribute to the conversation. While the film’s alright overall with its cyberbullying update and fine chemistry between mother and daughter, the new Carrie lead is a pale shadow of Spacek and too similar for this to be even necessary.