The Remake Comparison Project - Dirty Pillows in the House of St. Sebastian

Cody and Priscilla celebrate one year of Remake Comparisons with Carrie, 1976 and 2013.

CARRIE (1976)

Last September, Priscilla and I started the Remake Comparison Project with a look at the Apartment 1303 movies. It's very appropriate, and yet was entirely coincidental, that this September's Comparison, the one year anniversary of this article series, was a very special one: It was the first article that Pri and I ever wrote together in person, at her apartment in Brazil. The choice to cover the theatrical Carrie adaptations was also a bit of chance - I had won a copy of Carrie 2013 from a contest held by ShockTillYouDrop.com, but hadn't watched it yet. She hadn't seen the movie yet, either. So we decided to watch it together during my visit, and since we were going to be watching a remake we might as well watch the original as well and write about them both.

Carrie began as a short story idea concocted by a twenty-something writer who was so unhappy with how it was turning out as he typed it that he quickly dumped the pages into the nearest wastebasket. Those pages were later fished out of the trash by the writer's wife, who encouraged him to finish it.

As he returned to it, he found that he had more material in mind than a short could handle. The story gradually grew to a length of 199 pages... and the writer's wife's advice to follow the tale to its conclusion turned out to be very good indeed when this 199 page story ended up becoming the author's first published novel.

The Carrie novel is presented in epistolary fashion, a large amount of the story being told through excerpts from fictional newspaper and magazine articles, books, and letters written by characters. The hardcover edition, initially published in 1974 with a modest run of 30,000 copies, sold just 13,000 copies. When the paperback edition came out the following year, however, it was a smash success. A million copies were sold, and author Stephen King was on his way to literary superstardom.

Given the million copy sale, it's no surprise that studios were soon looking into acquiring Carrie's film rights. The studio who made the purchase was United Artists, distributor of the cinematic adaptations of Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Fledgling screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen (who would go on to adapt more King with the likes of It, The Tommyknockers, and Nightmares & Dreamscapes) was tasked with writing the script, while the director position was pursued by, and ultimately landed by, a very talented helmer: Brian De Palma (Sisters).

De Palma and Cohen's take on the material begins with a high school gym class playing volleyball, a game which ends with the meek, non-athletic Carrie White losing it for her team. The loss isn't taken well, especially not by popular bad girl Chris Hargensen.

One of the greatest influences on De Palma's career has been the works of Alfred Hitchcock. The school in the novel was Thomas Ewen High School, but it seems homage is being paid to Hitchcock with the name of the school in the film, Bates High School.

That's not the only thing reminiscent of Psycho, though. Some of the score sounds almost identical.

After gym class comes shower time, and even though Carrie just had trouble at the volleyball game, the locker/shower room is shot in a dreamy, slo-mo fashion that makes it appear that all is right in the world.

The shower scene is very placid and almost romantic with the help of the score. It's as if Carrie is just now starting to discover herself and see the changes happening to her by touching some of her body parts in a delicate way as she gets them soaped up. 

Carrie is the last girl left in the shower area, continuing to soap up as others are already putting on their clothes. Her serene shower comes to an abrupt end with an event that also ends the slow motion. Blood starts running down her inner thigh. Anyone who's watching immediately knows what's going on. Carrie has just begun her period.

I get the impression that some of those girls were still there just to watch Carrie. Most of them were all dressed up, and they could've stepped out of the locker room by then. But they are a group of very mean girls, so they probably just wanted some "let's make fun of Carrie" material, and they definitely got it.

Carrie doesn't know what's going on, though. A very sheltered girl, she has somehow avoided hearing anything about the menstrual cycle (and her body has avoided going through it) until this very moment during her senior year of high school. Completely ignorant of this occurrence, Carrie understandably freaks out when she finds herself bleeding.

Her peers are not sympathetic. Rather than helping the terrified girl and trying to explain to her what's happening, they jeer her, mock her, cornering her in the shower and pelting her with tampons and sanitary napkins while chanting, "Plug it up!"

The gym teacher, Miss Collins, is eventually able to stop this act of bullying, but Carrie's intense emotional state somehow seems to have an effect on her surroundings. A light in the locker/shower room explodes.

Carrie's entry into womanhood has also brought to the surface a powerful ability to move, or destroy, things with her mind if she concentrates hard enough or if her emotions are at their peak. She is telekinetic.

As Carrie makes her way home, her newfound telekinesis is demonstrated several more times. When the school prinicipal repeatedly gets her name wrong, she flips the ashtray off of his desk. When a little kid on a bicycle calls her "Creepy Carrie", she causes his to wreck.

The kid getting his comeuppance is one of my favorite moments. His "Creepy Carrie, Creepy Carrie!" taunt and following laugh are never far from my mind.

The girl has a rough experience at school, but her home life is even worse. Her mother Margaret is a highy judgmental religious fanatic who sees menstruation not as a natural part of every girl's life but as a curse brought on by sinful deeds and thoughts. If Carrie hadn't sinned, she never would've gotten the curse of blood. Margaret beats her daughter for getting her period and throws her into her "prayer closet" to spend hours praying in front of a glowing-eyed statue of the arrow-ridden Saint Sebastian, who was persecuted for being a Christian.

Scariest looking statue ever.

Extremely creepy. I used to think it was sort of a very strange Jesus statue. I'm glad it's not.

Traumatized by the event of the day, Carrie goes to her room, looks into her mirror... and causes it to shatter.

The punishment Miss Collins has in mind for the girls who tormented Carrie in the shower is three days suspension and refusal of their prom tickets, but the higher-ups decide to go easier on them. They're simply given one week of detention. A detention that Miss Collins is in charge of, so she proceeds to put the girls through an intense workout session. 50 minutes a day.

Of course, Chris Hargensen thinks she's too good to take any kind of punishment at all, blaming Carrie for getting her into trouble rather than herself. She talks back to the gym teacher, argues with her, and eventually walks out of detention. That lands her three days suspension and refusal of her prom tickets.

And Chris is not particularly bright, because she does that when the detention day is about to end. Which means she did a whole lot of it when she could've either said from the beginning that she wouldn't do it, or she could've accepted it and done it till the end like all of the other girls.

Miss Collins is one of the best characters in the movie. She's so intensely protective of Carrie and angry about what the girls did to her. She even goes so far as to slap the smartmouthing Chris... An act that would probably get her fired in this day, and was probably frowned on in 1976 as well, but that doesn't mean it isn't awesome. Chris definitely deserved it.

While her bullies are being punished, Carrie spends her free time doing research on her mental abilities, reading all about telekinesis.

One day, Carrie's perusal of the school library is interrupted by Bates High's star athlete, Tommy Ross. Boyfriend of one of the girls who pelted Carrie with tampons, Sue Snell.

Sue took part in the bullying, but quickly regretted doing it. Unlike the others, she feels bad about how she treated Carrie. Rather than just apologize, Sue decides to enable Carrie to experience the senior prom, which you can only attend if you have a date. She asks Tommy to take Carrie, and though he's reluctant at first, a little worried about the hit his image would take from being seen with Carrie, he ultimately agrees and approaches Carrie in the library to ask her to the prom.

Library, books... Sue doing her homework actually using a notebook. I love that. Makes me think of this current generation and how easy they have it. The access to information is astounding, everything is right there online. I wonder if it's going to contribute to a more intelligent group of people or just people who are more challenged as a result of having it so easy without having to rely on their brains so much.

Although Carrie clearly likes Tommy, judging by her reaction to a poem of his that is read aloud in a class they share -

She says the poem is "Beautiful", a response that is openly mocked by the class's jackass teacher. Carrie is surrounded by jackasses.

Between a bunch of bullies, a jerk of a teacher, a stupid principal who wants to rename her, and a lunatic for a mom, and all of that happening through a very stressful time filled with new discoveries, it's no wonder Carrie flips out. I don't blame her.

- and the fact that she keeps a newspaper clipping of his athletic achievements in her room, she runs away from him when he asks her out. She fears this is a trick being played on her. But after a pep talk from Miss Collins, and with Tommy not giving up on her, Carrie agrees to go to the prom with him.

Learning about her telekinesis, having been told by Miss Collins that she's pretty, having been asked out by Tommy, Carrie begins to gain confidence in herself. To say her mother isn't happy to hear of her prom plans is to put it lightly, but Carrie dares to stand up to the woman who has been beating her down her entire life... and uses her telekinesis to drive her point home at times.

When Carrie tells her mom, "Things are gonna change around here," it's a cheerworthy moment... Or would be if her mom wasn't clearly, dangerously psychotic.

Carrie's mom hides herself underneath the religious adoration, because in her disturbed mind, it'll keep her safe from her thoughts and desires as a woman. The very things that are completely healthy and natural. By not having those, which she calls "sins", all that's left is a seriously mentally ill woman, trying to hold on to her daughter, because she doesn't want to be alone and Carrie is all she has.

Disturbed to see her daughter coming into her own, considering telekinesis to be "Satan's power", Margaret White comes to the decision that "Thou halt not suffer a witch to live."

Bad things are brewing at the White household, and unbeknownst to Sue and Tommy their idea to take Carrie to the prom also sets the stage for Chris to get her revenge on the girl who got her in trouble.

Chris comes up with one of the nastiest tricks imaginable. Since recent issues began with Carrie bleeding, Chris decides to use blood against Carrie. Specifically, pig's blood, which she procures with the aid of her dimwitted, physically abusive boyfriend Billy Nolan and the bad crowd he hangs with.

Chris and Billy make such a lovely couple! He beats her up, and she must enjoy it, because she's still around. And she uses sex to get what she wants. Perfect match.

A pig is killed, a bucket filled with its blood. The bucket is then strung up in the ceiling of the school gymnasium, where the prom is to be held. The Prom King and Queen votes will be manipulated to ensure a win for Tommy and Carrie. A rope that runs under the stage will be pulled when the pair go up for their crowning, dousing Carrie with blood in front of everybody. Carrie's mother warned her that everyone will laugh at her if she goes to the prom, and Chris is out to make that happen.

In explaining his preference for suspense over shocks, Hitchcock said you could surprise by an audience by just suddenly blowing up the table characters are having breakfast at, but if the audience knows the bomb is there while the characters are having their breakfast, that is suspense, waiting to see if the bomb will explode... which it could do at any second... 

De Palma takes the "bomb under the table" approach to Chris's scheme. We're shown every step of the set-up, we know how it all works and what the plan is. We're just left waiting to see if this horrible prank will be carried out or get thwarted.

For a moment there, it feels and looks like something is going to stop the bucket from falling. If only.

Carrie makes her own prom dress, which her mother finds obscene because she can see her "dirty pillows" (that's breasts to you and me), and goes to the prom with Tommy Ross.

Carrie's dress is a bit too revealing, especially for the times. A fact that can be easily confirmed by checking out the other girls' dresses. But it is also another symbol of her newfound confidence and independence.

He may have been reluctant to take her at first, but once they're at the prom Tommy does his best to show Carrie a good time and allow her to enjoy prom to the fullest.

Tommy is so kind and patient with Carrie, it almost makes me teary eyed.

He turns out to be extremely sweet, and they make a cute couple. Sissy Spacek had that angelic look as Carrie, gorgeous hair and eyes. The ensemble works.

Carrie and Tommy talk, dance, he even gives her a kiss. They win Prom King and Queen, and Carrie is clearly having the best night of her life.

De Palma drives home how Carrie and Tommy's night at the prom has reached a level of dream-like perfection with the moment when they're dancing, the camera spinning around them as they spin. The actors aren't really dancing like that, spinning at such dizzying speed. They're actually standing on a platform that is spinning them around.

The couple-for-a-night take the stage. A tiara is placed on Carrie's head, she's given a bouquet of roses, the crowd applauds...

I find it funny how fast everyone's opinions change. Now everyone loves Carrie, and they're all happy to have her as their Prom Queen. Before then they all made fun of her, or didn't even know she existed. The power of the tiara!

Sue has sneaked into the prom alone to watch the King and Queen announcement. She happily takes in the sight of Carrie and Tommy's win... but her happiness is interrupted when she spots the rope running from beneath the stage to the bucket in the rafters. Sue helped decorate the gym for the prom, she knows these things aren't supposed to be there. She spots Chris and Billy under the stage. She tries to stop them, but she's too late.

Chris pulls the rope. Carrie is doused in pig's blood. Many of the people in the gym do indeed laugh at her, and in Carrie's distorted point of view she even envisions people who aren't laughing, people she trusted, like Miss Collins, laughing at her as well. To make matters worse, Tommy is hit in the head by the falling bucket. Knocked unconscious? Killed?

The best night of Carrie's life has quickly become the worst. The emotional distress, the attacks, the perceived betrayal, it's too much for her to handle. She lashes out with her telekinesis for a violent revenge.

People are crushed by closing doors and falling debris, blasted with a fire hose, electrocuted. Fire breaks out. The Bates High School senior prom becomes a bloodbath, and the pig's blood that was spilled is the least of it.

Watching Carrie is like taking a master class in directorial style. De Palma fills the film with fantastic imagery and makes awe-inspiring choices at every turn. Some shots have a great depth to them, some are shot with a split diopter to focus on different planes, there are great camera angles. The only thing I would consider a misstep is during a scene of Tommy and friends picking out their tuxedos, things are briefly sped up so it sounds like the guys are carrying out their conversation in chipmunk voices. That's a bit goofy.

The pre-prom scenes are some of my favorites. The guys getting tuxes, Carrie trying on some makeup, it's all very up and sunny, and it takes your mind away from the sad parts. The score helps with that, too.

The build to the bucket of blood getting dumped is basically a reprise of the way the shower scene was shot: slo-mo until the blood flow. 

When Carrie lashes out at the prom, De Palma uses a technique that he also used to great effect in Sisters. Split screen. Two angles of the mayhem occurring being presented to the audience at once.

The split screen is very interesting and effective, as always. It should be done in more movies.

Returning home after getting her revenge on both those deserving and the innocent, Carrie still has her mother to contend with. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"...

It's another example of fantastic style and imagery when the confrontation between Carrie and her mother climaxes with a flesh and blood replication of the Saint Sebastian statue, with kitchen ware in place of arrows.

Carrie regrets her latest use of her abilities as soon as she realizes what she's done. She needed more time to get used to her telekinesis and learn how to control her emotions. A hard task, considering the environment she was stuck in, though.

Carrie's sad, tragic life comes to a sad, tragic end.

It's an extremely melancholic movie. When you start to see hope for Carrie, thinking that things are going to turn around... think again. All she wanted was to be included, to experience her teenage years with some joy, to be part of something. It seems to be within reach for a while, but it isn't.

The movie reaches its conclusion with what may be the mother of all jump scare endings. De Palma's inspiration for the scare, which has Carrie's hand bursting out of her makeshift grave to grab Sue Snell, was the ending of Deliverance, which featured a water-logged hand rising from the river. That wasn't the shock that Carrie's final moment is, though. So every jump scare ending that followed through the decades may be thanks to Carrie. De Palma's choice to end the film this way gave us future scares like Jason Voorhees pulling the heroine out of her canoe at the end of Friday the 13th.

Carrie is an excellent film, very deserving of its status as a classic of the horror genre. De Palma and Cohen took King's great source material and brought it to the screen in nearly flawless fashion.

The movie reaches greatness not only because of De Palma's stylish direction but also due to the cast that brings the King-via-Cohen scenarios to life.

Sissy Spacek, whose casting was suggested by the film's art director Jack Fisk, who also happens to be Spacek's husband, fully and perfectly inhabits the role of Carrie. Piper Laurie goes so all-out in her portrayal of Margaret White that it borders on over-the-top, but completely works. The movie would lose some of its effectiveness if Laurie wasn't in there.

They're all perfect. The movie wouldn't be as deep and intense if some of those actors hadn't been chosen. Even P.J. Soles' character Norma (another nod to Psycho?) wearing that cap with her prom dress stands out as a meanie.

Betty Buckley and Amy Irving are great as Miss Collins and Sue, respectively. The supporting cast includes the likes of Nancy Allen, who makes Chris appropriately horrible, John Travolta, who is entertaining as the beer-swilling and pig-killing Billy, P.J. Soles, who would be in John Carpenter's Halloween two years later, and Edie McClurg, who assisted Ferris Bueller's principal a decade later.

I feel like the score is an extra character in the movie, and a very important one, too. It takes you for a ride. It goes up and down, brings out every kind of emotion that a certain scene calls for. It is similar to Psycho during some moments, but that doesn't take away from its wonderfulness.

Carrie was the first and still stands as one of the best Stephen King cinematic adaptations. Its highly respected status has endured for nearly forty years now, and it's not losing that anytime soon. Nor is it losing its place in my viewing rotation.

I used to think everyone was out to get Carrie when I was a kid. It wasn't until a little later that I realized that Sue and Tommy really weren't part of the prank at all. I love Carrie, every aspect of it comes together perfectly and it's definitely one of my favorites.

CARRIE (2013)

MGM, the parent company of United Artists, has had some complicated money troubles in recent years, and in an effort to deal with their financial crisis have put several remakes of popular titles from their library into development - Red Dawn, RoboCop, Ben-Hur, Road House, The Magnificent Seven, Mr. Mom, The Idolmaker...

One of those titles was Carrie, and Boys Don't Cry helmer Kimberly Peirce was hired to bring Stephen King's telekinetic teen back to the screen, with Glee writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who previously adapted King's The Stand into a comic book, providing the screenplay.

Aguirre-Sacasa's script was said to be a fresh adaptation of the novel that would stick closer to the source material, although the original's screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen had been quite faithful to it himself, having even included lines from the book verbatim. Ultimately, even though some different elements were worked in, the screenplay ended up being so similar to the original's that Cohen was given a co-writing credit.

The film begins with a scene not in the original: religious fanatic Margaret White writhing in intense pain, screaming and bleeding, apparently dying from the cancer her sinful husband put in her body before he ran off. It's not a tumor. Margaret is giving birth to a little baby girl... and she's not happy to see this result of sin emerging from her body. She grabs scissors, not to cut the umbilical cord but to stab the newborn in the face. She can't bring herself to do it, though.

Even though the first scene kind of serves a purpose by showing just how troubled Margaret was, even before having Carrie, I don't think it adds a whole lot to the movie. It is unsettling, but almost unnecessary.

Jump ahead eighteen years, and that baby has grown up to be Carrie, a senior at Ewen High School. It's said that Carrie was home schooled by her mother until the state forced Margaret to send her to public school for unspecified reasons.

I thought this was a nice touch, as Margaret is definitely the type of person who would home school her child. No offense to home schooling, I was home schooled for seven years, but some people who do it are a bit peculiar.

Margaret isn't happy to have to send her daughter out into the terrible world every day, and makes sure that Carrie does nothing but attend school while she's out. She is ordered to go straight to school in the morning and come straight home when the school day is over.

Her mother's demands are likely part of what has made Carrie so unpopular with her peers, who constantly ridicule and bully her. Her strict religious lifestyle and frumpy clothes add to their dislike of her. Carrie has been taught that her body is something to be ashamed of, and that comes through in her shy, self-conscious demeanor.

Carrie is played by Chloe Grace Moretz in the remake. When she was first cast a lot of people said she was too pretty for the role, but she does her best to appear awkward and self-conscious, folding in on herself as she walks around. Her "shy face" is a little over-the-top sometimes, though.

Sissy Spacek was pretty, too. There was something off about her, but I wouldn't say she wasn't pretty. I did find the two of them to be slightly different. Carrie was quiet in the original, but even then, she seemed a bit less awkward and shy than the remake Carrie. Also, remake Carrie was way more desperate to fit in.

As in the '76 film, the first instance of Carrie being derided by her classmates is during a game of gym class volleyball, although this game is played in the school pool rather than on a court.

When Carrie messes up a serve, the Chris Hargensen character tells her "You eat shit." Neither the scenario nor the line delivery works as well this time around.

I feel like the only reason they made it a pool volleyball game this time around, was to have the underwater shots. Since they wouldn't get away with all the nudity showed in the shower scene in the original, there had to be some sort of creeping up on young girls shot, and this was it. Feels out of place though.

After gym class comes shower time, and Carrie makes sure all of the other girls are out of the shower area before she goes in to wash up. Soaping up, she soon realizes that the bar of soap and her hands are covered with blood... Panicking, believing she's bleeding to death, Carrie seeks the help of the other girls. Realizing that Carrie has only had her period, the girls mock her and pelt her with tampons and sanitary napkins while chanting, "Plug it up!"

This act of bullying starts out slowly and calmly, with Chris simply telling her, "It's just your period, just plug it up," and offering her a tampon. Then things spiral out of control... and it's not as effective as in '76.

The situation is updated for the modern age by having Chris film the ordeal with her camera phone to be uploaded to the internet later on.

Gym teacher Miss Desjardin soon breaks up the scene, and as she does there are signs that Carrie's intense emotional state is having an effect on her surroundings. The tampons and sanitary napkins on the floor around her are pushed away by nothing, then a light shorts out.

Yes, Carrie's entry into womanhood has also brought to the surface telekinetic abilities that enable her to move or destroy things with her mind.

Miss Desjardin and the school principal explain to Carrie what's going on with her body, but it's not the principal getting her name wrong that makes her upset enough to cause further telekinetic damage this time. It's when they say they have to notify her mother of what happened that Carrie gets scared and causes the water cooler in the room to shatter.

I was very glad to see that the principal actually understood that her name was Carrie and not Cassie after the first time he is corrected in the remake. Much better than the principal in the original.

Margaret picks her daughter up from school but doesn't talk to her about what happened until they're in their home.

In her driveway, Carrie is mocked by a kid who calls her "Crazy Carrie", resulting in him getting knocked over by her newfound power. This kid is a nobody compared to the original's "Creepy Carrie" kid.

All of the displays of Carrie's abilities shown so far are alright, but none of them are quite as climactic as the ones in the original.

The original's iteration of Margaret slapped herself around a little when things got to be too much for her, but that element of the character is greatly enhanced in the remake. Margaret regularly cuts herself, and the first thing she does when she gets Carrie back home is beat her own head against the wall.

As Margaret and Carrie argue over whether or not menstruation is caused by sin and if Margaret should have told Carrie about it before this incident, Carrie is able to counter Margaret's talk of God's wrath with quotes about God's love. That doesn't save her from getting beaten and thrown into her "prayer closet" to spend hours praying for forgiveness.

That's Carrie's punishment for having her period. The girls who tormented her are punished with a week of detention to be overseen by Miss Desjardin, who puts them through a grueling exercise routine. Not believing she did anything wrong, Chris walks out on detention... Getting herself suspended and thus restricted from attending the upcoming prom.

Chris has her rich and powerful father come in to talk to the principal and Miss Desjardin, claiming innocence, demanding an apology and to be allowed to go to prom. Chris's plan falls apart when the deciding factor is letting the authority figures check her phone to see if she was the one who took the shower room video.

This scene perfectly shows what kind of person Chris is. A rich, spoiled, bitchy, entitled daddy's girl who feels like she can get away with anything. Not this time.

After cracking her prayer closet door and shattering a mirror in a school bathroom with her mind, Carrie starts researching telekinesis and getting a handle on her power.

She does some practicing, which enables the filmmakers to show off their CGI budget. The telekinesis tricks go a little too far in this one.

I do like the fact that it shows her practicing, otherwise one could argue that she got a hold of her powers too fast, but still... it gets to be too much. Half of the things come across as showing off and it doesn't work for what the movie is supposed to be about. The scene with the books is the perfect example.

A girl named Sue Snell is one who feels the worst about bullying Carrie. She believes she deserves the punishment she and the others have received. When Chris says the only reason Sue is acting regretful is because she doesn't want to miss her chance to have a perfect prom night, Sue decides to prove that's not the case by giving up her prom night and telling her boyfriend, lacrosse star Tommy Ross, to take Carrie instead.

Carrie and Tommy already have a bit of a connection, thanks to a reversal of the poem reading scene from the original. There, Carrie loved a poem Tommy brought in. Here, Tommy sticks up for Carrie when the teacher mocks the intense poem she chose to read.

The teacher is even worse in the remake. He not only puts Carrie on the spot and makes fun of her, but he is also flirting with a student. Total perv.

Tommy first approaches Carrie when she's sitting alone at lunch with her books on telekinesis. Thinking it's a trick, she runs off to the locker room and cries. But after a pep talk from Miss Desjardin (who also gives Sue and Tommy a talking to), and with Tommy not giving up on her and showing further interest in the poem she read, Carrie agrees to be his prom date.

Another thing that gets Carrie to say yes is that Tommy went to her house, and Carrie is terrified by the thought of him meeting her mom. Totally understandable.

Margaret is horrified to hear of Carrie's prom plans, but Carrie uses her telekinesis to put her mom in her place.

Their confrontation involves Carrie first lifting every piece of furniture in the living room with her mind, then Force choking her mom up into the ceiling. The original's simple effects of slamming windows and pushing her mom backwards were much more effective than this overblown stuff.

While Carrie prepares for prom, making her own dress ("immodest" by her mother's standards, since it bares her arms and shows that she has "dirty pillows"), Chris prepares to get revenge on the girl who ruined her school year by having her period. Her bad boy boyfriend Billy Nolan comes up with a plan involving pig's blood.

Carrie's dress is very modest, especially compared to the one in the original. I missed seeing her trying on makeup like she did in the original though, since I've always loved that scene. And in the remake she just comes out looking great with perfect dress, hair and makeup.

Chris tells Miss Desjardin that Billy doesn't go to Ewen High, and I think it's because this guy hasn't gone to any school in around ten years. He sure doesn't look like a teenager.

Neither does Chris. Nothing against the actress, and she does look mean and makes you hate the character like you're supposed to, but there's something about her appearance that gets to me. She doesn't look good at all, and the white eyeliner is almost distracting during some scenes.

After locking her protesting mother in the prayer closet, Carrie heads off to prom with Tommy, who proceeds to do his best to give her the best night possible.

I actually like the part where they get to the prom better in the remake. The girl who's nice to Carrie there goes to a different school, so it makes perfect sense. It always bothers me how everyone is friendly and nice to Carrie in the original, because it just feels so out of the blue that they'd change their minds so fast.

Tommy is patient and kind, but Ansel Elgort doesn't get me teary like William Katt did. Maybe it was Katt's hair that made him so magical.

I miss Katt's hair, too. But what makes remake Tommy a little less nice than original Tommy to me is the part where he compares himself to Tim Tebow, acting like he's a famous athlete doing some kid a favor. But still, he is sweet, and Carrie looks so happy with him.

A good time is had. There's dancing. Punch (possibly spiked) is consumed. Trouble is brewing, however. Sitting at home, Sue gets text updates on what's going on at the prom. When she gets a threatening text from Chris, who has sneaked into the prom with Billy, she rushes to the school to try to stop whatever Chris is doing.

This is another part that I like better in the remake. It explains why Sue went to the prom. In the original, it seems weird that she'd be there just to watch.

Sue arrives too late and is locked out of the prom by Miss Desjardin, who thinks she's the one causing trouble. Carrie and Tommy win a rigged vote for Prom King and Queen. They take the stage while the crowd applauds. Carrie is handed a bouquet of flowers... And in the rafters, Chris and Billy pull the rope holding up a bucket of pig's blood.

Carrie is doused and the shower room video starts playing on large screens in the room. Carrie is shocked, but doesn't lash out. The crowd reaction is much more subdued than in the original, too. It isn't until Tommy is knocked in the head by the falling bucket and seemingly killed that Carrie uses her telekinesis to get brutal, bloody revenge on everyone in the room.

Everyone except Miss Desjardin, who she lifts away from danger.

I also like how Miss Desjardin is spared in the remake. It always seemed unfair that it didn't happen in the original.

Miss Collins dying in the original is one of the most crushing deaths in the film... both for the audience and literally for her.

People are smashed by large objects, electrocuted, trampled. Fire breaks out.

I don't like how Carrie keeps using her hands as if she was orchestrating the whole thing. It makes it look really cheap and fake, and not like telekinesis at all. It looks more like she has evil powers, bad voodoo stuff.

Moretz does use her hands a lot, a bit too much. It makes her look like some sort of superhero. Things really go too far when she flies out of the gymnasium like a broomless witch.

Chris and Billy are singled out for a much more dynamic death scene than they received in '76, although it's the same in essence.

And I prefer the simplicity of the original.

It works much better in the original. I understand why they'd want to make this scene longer and more powerful, since Chris is such a huge bitch, but it's probably another thing that worked better in theory. Not that the scene didn't look good, I especially like the part when Chris's head is stuck in the windshield, but still, for a movie like Carrie, those scenes shouldn't be too elaborate. The simpler, the more effective, the better.

The bloodsoaked Carrie returns home. As she washes up, she begins to realize what just happened and is clearly horrified. Then she finds that her night of terror still isn't over, as her mother has decided that it's finally time to do what she couldn't do when Carrie was a baby. Her daughter must die.

At the beginning, there was a shot of the scissors stopping just short of baby Carrie's face. There's a version of that at the end, with a knife stopping just short of Carrie's face, but this time it's her will stopping it rather than Margaret's.

Carrie had more time to think, and more control over her abilities in the remake, so that makes it a little confusing as to why she killed her mom instead of just stopping her. And also, if she can fly and do all of those completely out there and exaggerated things with her mind, nothing says she can't bring her mom back.

Sue follows Carrie home and briefly gets involved with the horror that is occurring there, but is again unable to stop bad things from happening.

The White house is smashed to pieces and buried under tons of stones that Carrie brings down from the sky, an element from King's novel that the special effects crew on the De Palma film attempted but weren't able to pull off.

Carrie's sad, tragic life reaches a sad, tragic end.

But there's something about the style and atmosphere of this movie that doesn't let the sadness and tragedy reach me as much as it did in the first adaptation.

I blame the score, partly. It's not bad at all, but not as perfect and suiting as the original's.

Carrie's death paves the way for a laughable twist on the De Palma film's ending jump scare.

The ending jump scare, Carrie's hair at the beginning, and Chris's face are the worst things about the remake.

Carrie 2013 is a decent revisiting of the story, with some good performances from the likes of Moretz, Julianne Moore as Margaret, and Judy Greer as Miss Desjardin. None of the performances are as memorable to me as those in the original, though, just like the film as a whole isn't nearly as memorable or effective as the '76 version.

Moore is not as scary as Piper Laurie, but she does a very good job. Moretz is pretty good too, but is going to fall short when compared to Spacek. I did like Judy Greer's performance a lot; it doesn't fall behind when compared to Betty Buckley's Miss Collins. Actually, I'd give Greer the edge. Now Chris, Sue and the rest of the kids aren't as good as the ones in the original.

Plus, Sue wears boots in warm weather. It always gets to me when a character does that in movies. I wonder if that's a thing in the US. Definitely isn't here in Brazil.

There are twists here and there, but they don't add a whole lot, and when the actors are made to speak direct quotes from the original it only magnifies how much weaker this version is.

The biggest twist was very easy to see coming, which I did. No surprises there.

There is a line in there that resonated me, in which Carrie says she wants to try to be a "whole person". That has long been an endeavor of mine that I still don't feel I've accomplished.

Carrie '13 isn't a bad movie at all. It's fine in and of itself. It just isn't as perfectly executed as the '76 film was. I may watch it from time to time, but De Palma's remains the definitive Carrie.

It's hard for any "new" movie to be compared to the original. Everything just fits so perfectly in Carrie '76, and that combined with De Palma's flawless style made for such a great, unique movie. 
The remake is fun; I could do with less CGI, and Carrie's power is really out there, but it has good things going for it and I had a great time watching it. This definitely won't be the only time I check it out.