A Look at Carrie

So the Carrie remake just came out a few days ago. And While i said I would return Saturday, I got tied up in catching up on the shows I had missed from the week and doing some other things, such as playing Pokemon. But, for now, I'd like to take a moment and looks at the two Carrie films, and discuss what each one did better than the other, give an overall "score" to the two films, and then talk about some other stuff.

First, lets look at the good stuff the new version did. Particularly, the casting is just fantastic in it's three main characters. I must admit I may be partial to Chloe Grace Moretz (as the titular Carrie), since she stole my heart in Kick-Ass, in a totally non-sexual way. Though as she is getting older, it's getting harder and harder to ignore her beauty. Julianne Moore also did a fantastic job as the terrifying Mrs. White - which is much more insane (and in turn unsympathetic) than in the original. Lastly, the lovely Judy Greer as gym teacher Ms. Desjardin, also did a fantastic job, I especially enjoyed her in the film, because it was not only a surprise that she was in the film, but also because I am an avid Archer fan.

They gave Carrie more awareness and control over her telekinetic powers, allowing her to know what exactly she is capable of, which is a big change from the original. Giving the powers more presence in the film, making them more of a superpower, than something to be feared, not only made the film less horrific, but changed the overall tone for me. In the original the powers were relatively unknown to Carrie as to what she could do, and when she uses them, post blood bath, they are driven out purely by her teen-aged pubertal angst and rage. In the remake Carrie could have chosen to kill everyone prior to the spilling of the blood if she so chose, it also appears as though her assault on the students at the prom was drawn from a different.

In the 2013 version, Carrie allows for most of the prom-goers to escape the gym totaling her death count at around ten to twelve people. It feels more like an event she has been practicing, as she seemingly only kills her female classmates and a few others caught in the crossfire, rather than it all being done in a shocking and unexpected outburst of absolute rage.

As previously mentioned, the 2013 Carrie  has greater control over her powers, and this only serves to diminish the impact of the film's climactic prom scene. It's more of a display of how awesome Carrie is, rather than look how terrifying this telepath is. In the 1976 version, Carrie's naivete about what is happening to her makes her sudden rage-filled assault absolutely horrifying (in 1970's horror standards); She snaps, and kills every last one of the people at the prom that did her wrong, and countless more innocents. 

The 1976 prom sequence was all set up to build tension in the viewer making them anxious, because they know something is about to go down, but they aren't sure just how crazy it is going to get. I feel as though the remake tries to retell and express this tension, but fails. The camera is handled like any other movie sequence would in a prom scene, there's no big moves going on, the camera will jump from person to person, or hang still in two shot of Carrie and Tommy, or of Chris and Billy (the films main antagonists). there's no real camera movement to be noticed, nothing in the scene really "wow's" the viewer. Once that bucket falls in the 1976 version everything goes crazy, moving about in hurried confusion conveying Carrie's wrath and the uncontrolled mayhem and chaos of the gym while using a split screen as the action goes on.

In contrast, the 2013 version slows when the blood is spilled, and waits until the bucket itself drops from the rafters and knocks Tommy in the head, killing him. Carrie then checks on him, and kneels down, while everyone in the crowd just looks on in awe as a blood soaked Carrie, cries over Tommy's dead or unconscious body. She then stands and decides it's time to kill a few people, turning what was originally a terrifying show of rage that even Carrie couldn't control, into a situation where Carrie knows exactly what she is doing, and picking and choosing which few people she wants to die. It's as if she chooses to kill everyone over the fact that Tommy got hurt, rather it just being blind rage.

I found this to be odd though. At least for me, Carrie clearly has feelings for Tommy, that's no secret, he's like the only person who is ever nice to her. He only takes Carrie to the prom however because Sue tells him to, but that's aside from the point. Once the blood is spilled all tension goes, because Carrie doesn't immediately snap. There's practically no tension at all in the scene. We know her tormentors for the most part are going to die, everyone except for Sue, because she's innocent, she was "nice" to Carrie. That, and she's pregnant - which is later revealed but is easily predicted by her having to run to the bathroom randomly. Sue does survive the original as well, she's the only one that does (if my memory serves correctly), the pregnancy is new, along with her trip to the White house post prom. 

Well, not really a twist, more of a reveal...

Let's talk Carrie's mom for a minute now, to close off this discussion of the films. Piper Laurie's Mrs. White in the 1976 version is, like the 2013 version, crazy and unhinged, but she's still somewhat (albeit a little bit) human; her craziness being a result of her self-repression and her excessive religious fervor, tipping into hysterical mania at the film's crucial moments, where she needs to be crazy. We are able to see why Carrie both hates and loves her mother in the original, she isn't always crazy 24/7, there are moments where there's actual humanity. The 2013 Mrs. White, however, played by Julianne Moore, is absolutely insane. It's nearly impossible to feel much of anything for her except utter repugnance. She cuts herself, we see a lot of scars, and we see her do it once, which was excellently handled - it's a very unnerving scene -  which is an interesting change to the character that could have easily been used to been used to bring out some sort of sympathy for her, but is instead used to make us fear her even more. Early on into the film she takes a kitchen knife, a big one at that, to go check on Carrie, making her into a quasi-potential murderer. We already saw in the opening sequence that she nearly kills Carrie, but chooses not to. But doing it, seventeen years later, is a bit of a jump, and makes the character seem totally off. It's at this moment, where we become unable to sympathize with her, which is saddening because that's the whole point of the character, we aren't supposed to only fear her, we need sympathy to understand her, she just becomes a flat out monster with no humanity.

All in all, the remake wasn't that bad. But it doesn't really do anything that the original didn't handle better. Which is a little upsetting as a fan of Moretz, I wanted to see this one do better than the original. Hell, the original wasn't exactly a horror master piece. I do love (love's a strong word, "it's more of a it's one of my favorite Steven King works" actually) the book though. So, here are your scores.

1976: 7/10

2013: 7/10

They're both average, The performances, from Greer and Moretz make up for the remakes short comings, while the original is just a more rounded film that does some things masterfully while coming off as weak in some minor parts of the film. You should give the remake a shot, if you haven't seen the original yet, or if you're a Chloe Grace Moretz fan. I cannot deny that the original is great - it's on Netflix right now by the way.

**Fun side note. I just read a review by my film professor on the remake, our opinions and discussion points are eerily similar, and in the same basic order. I'm almost tempted to just shift some paragraphs around to make it look less like a copy of his review, minus some of the technical stuff.

If you haven't seen the original, watch it, it's a fun ride, and well worth it, and a bit more tension filled than the remake.

So, I bought Pacific Rim last night. I just thought you might like to know that. It was easily the best "blockbuster" of the summer. It's the dumb action movie, that knows it's a dumb action movie, and doesn't try to be anything more than that. It's everything Man of Steel tried to be. I didn't necessarily hate Man of Steel. Hell, I'm likely going to buy it, if anything because I'm somewhat of a self taught superhero film scholar and I want to look at it more. But the movie was riddled with senseless destruction and death in it's second act, and doesn't really seem to acknowledge that. Everything just gets destroyed. All of Smallville is obliterated even Martha Kent's house out on the farm, and roughly eighty percent of Metropolis is demolished. I cannot recall if they ever say how much damage, money wise, was caused to Metropolis, but I cannot imagine it being anything less than a billion. On a side note, there's like four parts in the movie where Superman visually, is literally compared to Jesus. That's the one movie trope I cannot stand - especially in Superhero films, or hero films in generally, when the hero is sub-textually taking on a holier than thou persona. 

I have some catching up to do on some twitch.tv Vod's - RollPlay + RollPlay: Ehbon - because I have no D&D campaign of my own to go to, so I watch people play D&D for days. Each session is like three to four hours long, and session 34 of RollPlay is today, and I'm on the final hour of session 32 right now. and then I have all four session of Ehbon to go through, and I have no idea how long those generally are, so, I have a lot of catching up to do. I wanted to watch more Arrow, but I think I may just wait until like next weekend or Thanksgiving break to do that.

So in light of the massive amount of catch up I have to play, so here, have a video.

**Added after initial post