Tags:
Film: Carrie
Year: 2002
Director: David Carson
Writer: Bryan Fuller
Starring: Angela Bettis, Patricia Clarkson and Rena Sofer
Review:
This film starts after everything has happened at the senior prom. We know that there were deaths and we see a police detective, David Keith, interviewing the survivors about what happened. One of them is Kandyse McClure. She seems pretty indifferent to everything that happened. We come back to this throughout the film.
We then cut to one week before the prom. We have the title character, Angela Bettis, who is quiet and shy. She has a crush on the best looking guy in school, Tobias Mehler. He is dating McClure. Bettis is bullied by Emilie de Ravin and Katharine Isabelle. The worst of it is when Bettis has her first period in the shower at school. She thinks she is dying and has no idea what it is. Led by Ravin, they mock her. The gym teacher, Rena Sofer, stops them for what they are doing and helps the poor girl. A light in the bathroom breaks.
It is decided that she will go home for the rest of the day. The principal cannot remember her name during their talk and freaks out about it. Bettis moves his desk part of the way across the room without touching it. On her way home, she is mocked by a boy on the bike. He scares her and he is flung into a nearby tree.
She arrives home and we see a flashback to when she was a girl. The younger version is Jodelle Ferland. She speaks to a neighbor girl when she was a sunbathing and this makes her mother, Patricia Clarkson, angry. This interaction was ended with fiery rocks falling from the sky on to their house as well as the windows opening and closing. It ends with a table being thrown through a window.
Bettis goes inside where her mother scolds her for what happened to her in school. She is required to pray in her closet because of it.
The next day, Ravin continues to bully Bettis. She writes ‘Plug It Up’ on her locker and fills the inside with tampons. She doesn’t get a reaction out of Bettis and this angers her more. Sofer gets to punish the girls for what they did as well. All those involved are required to do detention with her. Ravin refuses and Sofer reveals if she doesn’t, then she will not be going to prom. Ravin doesn’t do as she is told.
McClure feels bad for what she did so she approaches her boyfriend. She wants Mehler to take Bettis to the prom. He doesn’t want to at first, but McClure convinces him. It takes a little bit of work, but Bettis does agree to go. Her mother isn’t happy about it, but Bettis scares her with the power she is exhibiting.
Ravin isn’t happy about what she is hearing. She enlists Isabelle and her boyfriend, Jesse Cadotte, along with a couple of his friends to get their revenge on her. This will happen at the prom. It involves the prom king and queen and pig’s blood. What will happen? Will Bettis get her revenge?
I’m not going to spend this whole review comparing this to the original or to the novel. I will say that this one does do some good things with the story. I like that this one did more things from the novel than the original film did and it’s good to see that on the screen. The rampage idea is amazing through the city. This one also does a much better job at developing the story around Carrie and I think a lot of that is due to how much longer this film is. Even the parts with the detective investigating what happened is something that I liked to see. I did like that Bettis cannot control her power. That makes it scarier that it is just years of torment finally manifesting. Something I wasn’t a fan of was lowering Ravin’s character and making her boyfriend a psycho. I feel that it is better to have Ravin be much worse of a character. The prank makes more sense if she is. She is too tame and I wonder how much of that was due to the casting of Ravin in the role. I also wasn’t a fan of Ferland having power. The concept is that puberty causes her to gain her power, so that bothered me. Finally I hated the ending. I did learn they were planning on a sequel television show and that is something I glad was scrapped. I also had issues with McClure and why she isn’t more bothered about what happened at the school. It is really only a week later and her boyfriend died, she doesn’t seem that bothered by it at all.
The acting in this film is actually pretty good. Bettis plays a great Carrie. I would have liked to see her play it in a rated R version, as I think she might be right up there with Sissy Spacek. I think Bettis has a better look for it. Clarkson wasn’t great in her role which surprised me. She wasn’t bad though. I didn’t mind McClure as Sue. Ravin was too timid and the character she played was too toned down for me. She looks great though. I have to give props to Isabelle as well. She plays the P.J. Soles character in this film and she was solid. She not only looks great, but she plays such a mean character that I love it.
The worst part of this film was the effects. It was done CGI and it looks horrible. This is what really took my rating down for the film. I was considering coming in higher, but they looked so bad that it ruined much of the film for me. Most definitely the climax and rampage were ruined by it. The film does have some pacing issues as well. It runs a little too long. I know this was made for television, but a good 30-40 minutes could have been trimmed off this film and it would have flowed much better to me. They linger on some things just too long. The score of the film didn’t really stand out to me, but it also didn’t hurt the film.
Now with that said, this is a little bit closer adaptation to the original novel, but a mediocre film. There are some changes to the story that I liked and parts that I didn’t like to it. The ending really disappointed me. There is a really good cast to the film and for the most part is pretty solid. The effects are horrible. There are some editing and pacing issues. The score doesn’t really stand out to me. This film I say is average. I would recommend the original over this and probably the other remake. This one is pretty faithful to the novel, so if you’re a fan of that, I would tell you to give this one a chance then.
My Rating: 5 out of 10