Horror Movie Month // Carrie (2002) // Because nothing quite says scary like a Lifetime film

Month of Horror Reviews Carrie (2002) // The Remake from Hell

Lets face it, Netflix is pretty damn awesome. For shut ins like me, it brings me movies without having to go outside and interact with anyone. Avoiding social situations for the win, I say. And like the video stores of yesteryear, Netflix has got some weird shit. So I figured, why not take a look at some of the stuff I’ve found while browsing the world of Netflix.

This should be fun.

Or not.

Lets start with Carrie. But wait, your saying, Carrie isn’t new. Well, this isn’t the fun 1970’s version. Nope this is the shot for shot remake from 2002. I can almost guarantee you haven’t seen this version. You lucky bastard.

Okay, a little back story time. Carrie originally began its life as a novel written by Stephen King. The story itself is pretty simple, which for Stephen King, is kind of impressive. Social outcast gets supernatural powers. Girl goes bonkers. Girl kills everyone and makes the town go bomb. Its kind of a thing with King.

It didn’t take long for a movie to be released. Its pretty good, as far as film adaptations go. The acting was decent, the effects were good for a film with basically no budget. I’m actually it surprised how long it took for a remake to happen, and no, I’m not referring to the one being released next year. I am talking about a film that was made over twelve years ago.

This film is terrible. I cannot express how absolutely terrible this version is. Let’s start off with the way this movie looks. I’ve seen some bad looking films, and this one is high up on the list. It looks like it was shot on someone’s camcorder. There’s a weird looking blur effect on all the shots. It looks like a mix between a crappy Lifetime and a crappy Syfy channel movie.

Its just an incredibly ugly movie.

Lets delve into the story?

With this remake, they decided to take more from the book than the first film (though they did have a habit of pulling dialogue from the original a lot). Their decision to do this was not exactly a good one. They didn’t have the budget so the effects looked bad.

At the beginning of the film, we see that Margaret White in bed having just given birth to Carrie. And once she’s given birth, the rocks start falling from the sky and hitting the house. And yes, the effect looks straight out of an Asylum film.

We then follow Carrie who, as a teenager, deals with the taunts and general bullying brought on by the fact that she is religious and looks like she always three seconds away from falling on the ground and foaming at the mouth. This is where setting the film to a more recent period of time is stupid. If the film were in the 1970’s, I could buy some of the attitudes displayed in the film, like when the gym teacher assaults one of the students, or Carrie’s complete lack of social understanding. But in the age of the internet, as well as political correctness, some of this stuff just feels pretty unbelievable.

For one, if Margaret wanted to keep her daughter from sins, freaking home school her. And the gym teacher’s assault would’ve gotten her fired the minute she put a hand on a student. I know, some schools even in this day and age are lax, but I kind of doubt it. The main actress who portrays Carrie is pretty good. She isn’t Sissy, but she gives it her all. I wish I could say the same for the others. Wow is the acting bad.

Many of them read the lines like they have a set of cue cards in front of them.

To be fair though, much of the movies “original” dialogue is pretty bad. Sue Snell has a particularly uninspired bit of lines about religion that made me want to reach through the screen and choke her (dogs playing poker? Are you fucking kidding me?).

That also goes into my next point, which is the characters themselves. Sue Snell in the book was just your average teenager, who just wanted to do one nice thing for the school pariah. She didn’t try to play martyr, she just thought she was helping. In this version, she comes off as a real witch. She seems just as mean spirited as Chris. Overall, if you like Carrie, stick to the book or the original film and just avoid this piece of shit.