Carrie

It's disappointing watching Carrie considering the consistent momentum it achieves throughout to watch everything crash and burn as everything in the movie actually starts crashing and burning. The scenes involving blood and guts ironically enough are the least gritty scenes in Carrie, stopping the movie from greatness.

What's up? Carrie White's (Chloe Grace Moretz) life is shit. At home, her overprotective, over-religious mother Margaret (Julianne Moore) prevents any freedom or independence on Carrie's end. She's the type of parent who would much prefer to put her child in a cage and watch her as opposed to releasing her into the real world where things can't be watched 100% of the time. At school her life is even worse. After a particularly embarassing attack led by Chris (Portia Doubleday), Carrie snaps, unleashing powers she never knew she had. One member of Chris' group; Sue (Gabriella Wilde) strives to make things easier for Carrie after feeling guilt on the bullying. She wants her boyfriend Tommy (Ansel Elgort) to take her to the prom for a night of fun, but Chris and the rest of the group are less then willing to give Carrie her time to shine.

What's good? A majority of the characters are brought to life by the performances. Chloe Grace Moretz is great as Carrie easily one of her best performances to date. As opposed the original where Carrie is just depicted as out there, Moretz gives her a deeper feeling, truly damaged, vulnerable and alone. She's great.

Julliane Moore shines as her mother as well. I would easily say her scenes are the most chilling of the entire movie. She's doing everything she does because of how much she loves her daughter but Moore makes her character terrifying as well. She owns her rendition of one of the more famous monsterous mothers in movie history.

Judy Greer gives some charm and fun with her portrayal of Ms. Desjardin, the only adult standing in Carrie's corner. Her scenes give a nice bit of comic relief and a warmth that the rest of the scenes and characters don't bring.

One of the bigger surprises is how deliciously evil Portia Doubleday is as Chris. She's so nasty and vile without an inch of regret you're waiting for her to grow horns. All of her scenes have a sense of entertainment in how much fun Doubleday has with throwing her venom on the viewers and on Carrie.

As I previously mentioned the scenes in Carrie involving the relationship with her and her mother are great. They're entertaining and very suspenseful, you never know what either of them are thinking or what either of them are capable of doing to the other one.

What the fuck? Unfortunately all the tension that Carrie builds up is dropped like a bucket of blood during the prom scenes. A cool death scene or two (most notably the one involving the wires and fire) can't shake a feeling of a nausea-worthy level of CGI involved. Carrie begins dropping so many special effects I was looking around for a controller to jump into the action. It just becomes silly and very far from scary considering how laughably overdone these scenes are.

As noteworthy as some of the characters are, I get a nagging feeling that some of them could have been written better, or maybe even acted with a bit more power. Wilde's performance comes across as rather tepid. Her character doesn't seem to be given much to do but look regretful and sad and I wish the Sue character was given more to do, or that Wilde should have done more with them. Same goes for Ansel Elgort as her boyfriend & Alex Rusell as Chris' boyfriend Billy, who feel like walking, talking cardboard cutouts of characters.

Overall: The final scene of the original Carrie is easily one of the most talked about scenes with the exception of the prom scene. And this version just seems to throw it all away at the end, resorting to cheap effects and a lack of an interesting conclusion. Carrie shot for Prom Queen and instead ended up as a solid RU.

3/4