Carrie

4 December 2013 | 12:01 pm | Guy Davis

Carrie feels more like a missed opportunity than anything else.

Whenever I thought about the folly of making a new film adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel Carrie – which was already brought to the screen somewhat superbly back in 1976 by director Brian De Palma – I reminded myself to consider the reaction genre fans might have had back in the day when remakes of much-loved movies like Invasion Of the Body Snatchers or The Thing were announced.

In those cases, filmmakers like Philip Kaufman and John Carpenter managed to combine their obvious respect for the original with a different take on the material and their own sensibilities and style. And some new classics were created as a result.

It's been nearly 40 years since De Palma's take on Carrie, the story of a shy, victimised teenager who uses her nascent telekinetic powers to wreak terrible revenge on her high-school tormentors, and the world has changed a lot since then. With the undeniably talented Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) at the helm, an updated version would surely be relevant and meaningful to modern audiences while retaining the story's surface shocks and underlying sorrow, right?

Well, sort of. Peirce's Carrie isn't a dud – it's a wholly competent, occasionally inspired piece of work – but it only rarely works the nerves or gets under the skin the way King's book or De Palma's film did. For the most part, Peirce takes an understated approach to the story, and that works well in generating sympathy for Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz, whose natural self-possession makes it hard for her to effectively convey the character's awkwardness).

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But horror is a genre that requires a particular skill-set, and Peirce doesn't seem technically suited to the task of unsettling or terrifying viewers with this type of story. Consequently, Carrie feels more like a missed opportunity than anything else.