Plug It Up! Plug It Up! – Carrie Needs No Remake

by Shawn Loeffler

Plug it up! Plug it up! Let’s take that infamous chant made to Carrie in the girl’s shower as she experiences the horrors of her first menstrual period and apply it the inevitable remake of the 1976 De Palma film. Yes, Carrie is a remake that doesn’t need to be made for a number of reasons. Here are three (feel free to Yell! your two-cents worth in the comments section below):

First, director Kimberly Peirce (Stop-Loss, Boys Don’t Cry) might understand and have the knowledge to tell the human aspect in Carrie (the part about being an outsider in high school and being raised under the oppressive hand of a religious zealot mother), but she’s never directed horror. My concern is that after she builds the tension in the film, she won’t be able to deliver the blood orgasm.

Second, there will certainly be cell phones in the remake and they’re all going to be directed towards Carrie as she proudly stands on the stage as prom queen. Honestly, I have no idea if that will happen, but the Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Glee, Big Love – yeah, that sounds like horror and supernatural to us too) screenplay will likely fail as it tries to modernize this Stephen King tale. This writer-director duo will likely produce a highly stylized film that’ll look great, but it’ll fail to make us give two shits for Carrie – because modern film can’t do that the way it used to be done. Somewhere between the ‘80s and today, genre film has lost the ability to develop characters, much less create pathos. Remember Poltergeist? Christ, Tobe Hooper made us feel for the house.

Third, Chloe Moretz (Hugo) is reportedly cast in the lead role made famous by Sissy Spacek (or did the role make Spacek famous?). Those are some pretty big shoes to fill. Spacek was believable as Carrie; she was a meek wall-flower with low self-esteem. She wasn’t ugly, but you could see how her looks would have attracted the kind of cruelty that only high schoolers can deliver. Now, Chloe Moretz is only 15, and she doesn’t look like she’s been ridiculed a day in her life – until right now. There is nothing that she can bring to this role that Spacek so masterfully did in ‘76.