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JOSHUA LAKEY | STAFF WRITER
It’s 1976, and Carrie White is awaiting high school hunk Tommy Ross to pick her up and accompany her to her high school senior prom. Except it’s not 1976 and Carrie White isn’t played by Sissy Spacek.
It’s 2013 and Hollywood’s star on the rise Chloe G. Moretz along side Julianne Moore stars in the new revamped rendition of “Carrie,” which premiered Oct. 18. “Carrie” is famed author Stephen King’s first published novel.
A reimagining of this bestselling novel tells the story of Carrie White (played by Moretz), a shy, introverted young girl who has telekinetic abilities and is ridiculed by her high school classmates and sheltered but also tormented by her inordinately religious and deranged mother (played by Moore).
Carrie gets pushed beyond the limits when a classically viscious prank is played on her at her senior prom which causes Carrie to unleash a horrific deadly telekinetic massacre on the whole prom.
Comparisons to the 1976 “Carrie” starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie are plentiful, yet this rendition was relatively lack luster on a “scary” level.
Chloe G. Moretz gave a moderately exceptional performance portraying Carrie White but it was Julianne Moore who truly flourished as Margaret White.
Director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss) and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Big Love, Glee) were very loyal to King’s material more so than Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation, but clearly failed to supersede the original.
The chemistry between Moretz and Moore did however live up to that of Spacek’s and Laurie from the 1976 film. Moore was as cynically compelling as Moretz was timidly brilliant. Every echoing and suspenseful moment came when Moretz and Moore were collectively together.
Clearly when seeing this film Pierce sings the same tunes and follows the same beat as De Palma’s adaptation but made it her own modernized rendition.
The climatic and iconic “pig’s blood in a bucket” scene, the novel and film’s pivotal moment where Carrie White snaps into a deadly telekinetic rage, didn’t quite live up to Spacek’s performance, who looked inhuman covered in blood in the original film, where as Moretz looked considerably CGI induced and a little unreal.
The film’s opening weekend only made $17 million dollars at the box office, according to “Entertainment Weekly,” despite the proximity to the Halloween season.
From the looks of it, Carrie White has returned to instill fear in us all, reminding everyone that we may need to be a little nicer to the quiet girl in the corner.
