Carrie (2002)

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Carrie (2002)

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A curious thing happened to me today. After reading "Salem's Lot" for the umpteenth time, I was reminded of how that book and "Carrie" are two of my favorite Stephen King stories. I started looking around the 'net and found out that there are several proposed remakes for "Salem's Lot" in the works. That got me curious about "Carrie", and I found out there was indeed a remake in the works…in fact it was finished, and on the air TONIGHT. I just finished watching it, and my feelings about it are rather mixed.

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Carrie (2002)

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I've always felt that the attention given the Brian DePalma original, especially people who regard it as a 'genre classic', was a little unjustified. Yes, Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie were great. So were Amy Irving and Betty Buckley, and I have nothing but respect for DePalma. But something just didn't click. I didn't feel it did the book justice, especially in the way it left out Carrie's rampage through town at the end of King's novel. I was all for the idea of a remake, and I wasn't cynical about it being a TV movie–"Salem's Lot" was both scary and absorbing, despite being made for broadcast television.

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Carrie (2002)

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So now we have the made-for-TV "Carrie", which brings us equal parts of good and bad.

The unhealthy feeling of deja-vu was a little distracting, since the script stuck close to King's book (as did the 1976 film). The trendy TV-drama camerawork (you know, the handheld shots that look like they were filmed by an epileptic) was less than impressive, and the film sorely lacked DePalma's artistry in composition. Many of the crucial scenes lacked establishing shots, and there were some very inappropriate closeups.

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Carrie (2002)

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But there were some intriguing aspects to the film as well. Patricia Clarkson, as Margaret White, really brought something human to the role, whereas Piper Laurie (in the original) went way over the top and played the film like it was a comedy. In this movie, there was a truly pathetic sense of frustration in the relationship between Carrie and Margaret that was missing from DePalma's film. Additionally, the TV movie's lengthy runtime left plenty of room for the inclusion of some of the novel's more memorable sequences, such as the hail of stones that Carrie summons on the house as a little girl. Although I wouldn't say that Angela Bettis was necessarily better than Sissy Spacek as Carrie, I will say that the script gave her a lot more to do with the character. In this film, Carrie comes off as awkward but observant, and one scene in particular between Carrie and Sue Snell in a drugstore really establishes her emerging confidence. I really liked Kandyse McClure as Sue, by the way, and it was eerie at times how much she resembled Amy Irving from the original. Even though I love Nancy Allen, I didn't really like her take on Chris Hargensen, and I have to say that I thought Emilie de Ravin was really good at being a bitchy high school teen.

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Carrie (2002)

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Although it was comparatively short on gore, "Carrie" did have a few surprises and some terrific shocks, especially the way the filmmakers took some of DePalma's ideas and expanded on them (such as the use of a killer basketball backboard). It was a little satisfying to see Carrie's rampage through Chamberlain realized on film, and one of this film's strongest points is how it doesn't try to pretend that anybody doesn't know what is going to happen. Rather, it embraces the novel's use of flashback by showing the survivors of "prom night" being interviewed by the police after the disaster is over.

But the thing that really made me react like a drunken football fan whose team just scored the winning touchdown? An Argento-esque zoom shot inside of somebody's body to show their internal organs. I was ecstatic.

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Carrie (2002)

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The only part of the movie that truly did not work was the absurd conclusion, which cheats on the entire tragedy of the whole drama, as well as tacking on some transparent attempts at duplicating DePalma's infamous (and endlessly copied) hand-from-the-grave shock from the 1976 original.

While this "Carrie" doesn't really have the vision or finesse of DePalma, I thought it was extremely well-produced and competently directed, and the little extra bits of story that we got to see restored to this screenplay should be extremely gratifying for fans of King's book.

IMDB Reviewer

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Carrie (2002)

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Special Features:
– Bonus trailers for: "Carrie", "The Howling", "The Fog", "Jeepers Creepers"