Carrie (2002)

Unless you've somehow completely missed the trailers, commercials on TV, posters and banners in your local theaters, and the rest of its advertising campaign, you've probably noticed that a remake of the classic 1976 horror movie Carrie is being released. While Brian De Palma's original cinematic adaptation of Stephen King's novel is a great flick that still holds up very well nearly forty years after its initial release, I guess it was time for Hollywood to tell the story again.

But what you're probably unaware of is that this is actually the second time that Carrie has been remade. All is forgiven if you haven't heard of that other one, however. It actually almost immediately fell into obscurity, but that's probably because it was never released theatrically to begin with.

No, the earlier remake of Carrie was instead a made-for-TV movie. Originally broadcast on NBC on November 4, 2002, the movie was intended to be the pilot for a potential Carrie television show in the same vein as The Dead Zone. But thanks to poor ratings, the proposed series was scrapped. And while I wonder how the show would have went, I'm glad it didn't get picked up, because this pilot is about as mediocre as you can get.

It's hard not to feel sorry for poor Carrie White (Angela Bettis). The daughter of an abusive religious fanatic (Patricia Clarkson), Carrie's social awkwardness makes her a target for merciless teasing from her classmates. But just when Carrie thinks life can't get much worse than it already is, she gets her first period while showering after gym class. Thanks to her strict, sheltered upbringing, Carrie has no idea what's happening and believes she's bleeding to death.

Her classmates take great humor from Carrie's situation, happily mocking and laughing at her. The scene is only broken up when Miss Desjardin (Rena Sofer), the gym teacher, intervenes. That doesn't stop the bullying, though, as that same day Carrie finds her locker vandalized and stuffed full of tampons. Feeling guilty for her part in what happened, Sue Snell (Kandyse McClure) tries to make amends with Carrie by convincing her boyfriend Tommy (Robias Mehler) to show Carrie a good time by taking her to the prom.

But they are unaware of the plans of Chris Hargensen (Emilie De Ravin), whose extreme lack of remorse for having teased Carrie gets her banned from the prom by Miss Desjardin. Instead of trying to apologize to Carrie, Chris instead wants revenge for being punished. She rigs the ballot to get Carrie elected prom queen, and arranges for a bucket of pig blood to be dumped over her head during the coronation. No one could have predicted, though, that this prank would fully trigger Carrie's burgeoning telekinetic powers, an ability that sparks a violent, bloody rampage.

The tragic story of Carrie White is a timeless one. The only parts of the original movie that have aged badly are the fashion and hairstyles. But updating it for modern audiences, however, is not something I have a problem with. When this movie was first broadcast, it came just a few years after a batch of high-profile school shootings throughout the United States. So even after the September 11th terrorist attacks and George W. Bush's "war on terror" took over the headlines of the time, a movie about a teenage misfit's prom night rampage was still somewhat timely. It's too bad, though, that this remake is a disappointment through and through. It ends up proving that old saying, "Don't fix what isn't broken."

At the helm is David Carson, a veteran television director primarily known for his work with the Star Trek franchise. And for some odd reason, Carson films nearly the entire movie with the camera tilted at an odd angle. It's all very weird and disorienting, never once doing anything to benefit the movie. I just kept thinking to myself that I'd be much happier if the camera had actually sat naturally for a change. It also doesn't help that despite this ostensibly being a horror movie, there's nothing scary about it. The climactic prom scene and the chaos that follows could have been a tense, unnerving experience, but it's instead brought down by unconvincing CGI, a hilariously goofy soundtrack, and no tension whatsoever.

The biggest problem with the movie, though, is that it's too long and bloated, running three hours if you're watching it with commercials. Or if you're watching the DVD without commercials, it clocks in at roughly two hours and fifteen minutes, which is a small bit of mercy. Either way, that is still way too long. There's still an hour left in the movie when Carrie and Tommy arrive at the prom, for crying out loud. Carson must have been under contract to deliver the movie at a certain length, because he honestly could have stood to chop out at least a half-hour of the extraneous fluff that populates the movie. He honestly could have brought this thing in at an hour and a half without commercials, and it would have been a far sleeker, less boring movie because of it.

But it doesn't help that he's working with a disappointingly dull script written by Bryan Fuller. I say that because the largest part of the script is padding, padding, and more padding. It causes the movie to move at a snail's pace, along an uneven path that takes us nowhere for much of the movie. While a lot of the fluff and padding does shed some light on the other characters and the world that surrounds Carrie, it ultimately serves to take away from Carrie herself. Granted, some time should be given to Sue, Chris, and Mrs. White, but Carrie is the movie's central character and it occasionally feels like Fuller loses focus of that.

Fuller does take a different approach than expected by keeping the narrative somewhat closer to King's novel. While the book is constructed in part from eyewitness statements, police reports, and letter excerpts, the movie is told mostly in flashback, with Sue Snell and various others telling their sides of the story to the curious Detective Mulchaey (played here by David Keith). He also throws in some scenes left out of the original movie, like a scene where a young Carrie causes a meteor shower while being abused by her mother. It's a unique way to approach it, but all it really did was just remind me of Blair Witch 2. And if there's one thing I don't want a movie to do, it's remind me of Blair Witch 2.

Being made for network television does not help the movie at all, either. It forces Fuller and Carson to tone things down, to tame them to fit NBC's sensibilities and keep the FCC and watchdog groups from breathing down their necks. The bullies don't seem as particularly vicious as you'd imagine they would be. One character simply whispering "you suck" in Carrie's ear after she strikes out in a softball game feels more lame than mean, and the shower scene at the beginning is nowhere near as hellish as Brian De Palma depicted it in 1976. De Palma made you honestly felt Carrie's helplessness and desperation, but that's nowhere to be found here. The whole thing sadly seems neutered and watered down.

The movie's open ending has also been a point of contention for some people. Since it was supposed to lead to a TV show, I can understand the reasoning behind ending the pilot in such a way. But that TV show never came thanks to the low ratings the pilot got, so we're left with an ending that feels weird and out of place. I do wonder how a Carrie TV show would have gone, though. I imagine it would have been similar to The Incredible Hulk, with Carrie wandering from town to town, helping people and having the occasional telekinetic freakout that leaves a trail for Detective Mulchaey to follow. The show probably would have been awful and found itself cancelled after six episodes, but it could have made for great material to mock.

And last but not least, the cast has its ups and downs. Among the supporting cast, Emilie De Ravin's character is written as a mean, hateful bitch, but her dialogue is often so lame that you end up rolling her eyes at her. It doesn't help anything that De Ravin plays the role like she's auditioning for some awful high school melodrama produced for Lifetime. Patricia Clarkson, meanwhile, is no Piper Laurie. She's on autopilot through the whole thing, almost as if she's doing the movie because she lost a bet and is disappointed because of it.

Kandyse McClure tries her hardest and come off as very warm and likable, while Rena Sofer is awesome as the gym teacher sympathetic to Carrie's plight. But as you might expect, the movie belongs to Angela Bettis. If you've seen her in May, then you're not alone if you thought the role of Carrie White would be tailor-made for Bettis. And while she's unfortunately stuck in the shadow of Sissy Spacek, Bettis is fantastic in the role. She brings a complexity to Carrie; you can sense shyness, sadness, loneliness, and fear all at once. Her Carrie would love to belong and live a normal life, but the abuse heaped upon her by her mother and classmates for years has turned her into a perpetually frightened ball of nerves. It's a very good performance that Bettis should be proud of, even if it's wasted in a movie as mediocre as this.

Much like The Rage: Carrie 2, the original's maligned sequel, this remake exists today as something of a curiosity. Many have either forgotten or are simply unaware of its existence, and those who have seen it were often left unimpressed. I will give those behind the remake credit for at least trying to make the best movie they could. But try as they might, all they've done is remind me that somebody else did it better nearly forty years ago. I've never had a problem with the concept of remakes in general, but should they make me wish I was watching the original instead? I have high hopes for this new remake, so here's hoping it turned out better than this other one.

Final Rating: **