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Any horror fan or movie goer worth a damn knows about Brian DePalma’s Carrie...and any horror lover that grew up in the 90s is at least aware of the nostalgia dripping Rage: Carrie 2...and every wet-Pamper-wearing snot nosed tween can probably tell you about the 2013 remake starring Chloe Moretz, but you almost never hear or read about the 2002 made-for-TV movie starring Angela Bettis. This is not only a shame but a down-right travesty of overlooking a unique specimen. Let’s examine it together!
I want to start off with the positives in this exploration. First and foremost, Angela Bettis is phenomenal. Obviously Carrie should be an outcast in her group, but none of the Carries (past or present) felt more alone that Bettis. She just emits this aura of weirdness and has this psychotic look in just about every scene like she’s just waiting for something horrible to happen to her. I can’t give her enough praise for this role. Anyone looking for more fantastic weirdness from her should also check out May (2002).
Patricia Clarkson plays Carrie’s mom. She does a great job becoming this religious psycho...so good in fact, that I’m actually thinking she might be a member of the Westboro Baptist Church in real life, someone should look into this. The rest of the cast does an adequate job with no other real standouts IMO. Though I should mention that Katherine Isabelle is in this and while lots of people complain about actors in their late 20 playing teenagers, you won’t hear me bitching about seeing Miss Isabelle in any film.
Ok, now that we got the great things out of the way onto the more mediocre facets of this movie. While this is a remake, it’s not a shot for shot remake like 1998’s Psycho. They move the story into 2002 along with flip phones and that late 90s hair. (I’m looking at you in the background with the haircut from the older brother in Home Improvement) However, that does not stop them from taking some scenes, word for word, and re-creating them. I found these tiresome as I just watched the original recently and at points felt like I was watching the same movie again. If you’re making a remake you’re free to recreate plot points or iconic moments, but no one wants exact dialogue and camera work repeated. I’ll give one positive point to the recreation of the scene where Carrie flips the little jerk kid off his bike; in this version she throws that little fuck into a tree and he obviously breaks his arm. I was dying with laughter when I saw that...after I rewound it for the 3rd time.
And that brings us to everyone’s favorite part of a review...the negatives. I’m prepared to see some poo being flung my way but I want to preface this by saying I never read the book so I don’t know what is “accurate” to the character or whatever, but I did see the Brian DePalma flick so that’s my baseline for all Carrie information. First, the childhood flashback where a young Carrie sees some neighbor boobs and the mom flips out and brings her inside to deliver some old fashioned ass whoopins, when suddenly the little girl causes a meteor storm to rain down fiery rocks all into the house; it doesn’t fit with the rest of the character. I always saw Carrie’s manifestation of her telekinetic powers as an obvious symbol of her awakening sexuality and the arrival of her womanhood. I suppose you could say that it was the earliest manifestation of her sexuality, but in that case wouldn’t it make a whole lot more sense to have her like move a chair or close a door...not bring about the apocalypse. While we’re on the subject of altering the characters, I want to make a point of mentioning the Tommy character. He comes off as pretty aloof to the whole “take the weird girl to the prom” thing. He doesn’t seem to give a single shit about Carrie, and he seems a little too douchey for the audience to actually care about him. Not to mention that he certainly doesn’t have the golden locks that Zeus himself gave to William Katt in the original.
Sprinkled throughout the movie are police interviews with a couple different characters. And when I say sprinkled I don’t mean it in the way you get some on your ice cream. I mean it like when someone slaps the ice cream out of your hand and forces you to eat a mouthful of the flavorless colored turds in between every two bites of delicious rocky road. Right when you think you’re starting to get into the movie “BOOM” cut to the police interview because they couldn't think of a good transition from on scene to another, also while interviewing the Sue Snell character was mildly annoying, the movie starts jumping back and forth to other characters being interviewed and my annoyance levels exploded. No one gives a shit what the class president thinks. It seems so damn forced I feel these were crowbarred in after the movie was already completed either to pad the time to accommodate another block of commercials, or because the producers owed some favor to the guy that plays the cop. All of these scenes could have been condensed into one short shot either at the end of the movie or even as an after credits thingy.
The entire look of the film (shot on video) is terrible. The hand held camera is so distracting with the addition of the shot on video quality, the movie come off as simply poorly put together. On top of the shakey hand-held camera and General Hospital quality video, we are forced to suffer through unnecessary camera angles and complicated cinematography. I get it David Carson, you learned what a dutch angle is in film school...learn another shot, not every one of them has to be tilted. The most annoying shot of the movie is the rotating table shot during the prom. Again, I get it...you’ve seen a Tarantino movie. I don’t normally come down so hard on camera work or film limitations but honestly this is one of the rare times I’ve found it so distracting. Not all of it is bad. There are a few gems in there like the shot of Carrie leaving the dance, this is badass and well done with a little CGI help, and the shower scene is kept really tight and I like the overhead views of the girls looking down on Carrie. That being said, the overall composition of the rest of the film is piss poor.
This is nitpicking, but using her powers to fill the tub and move shit out of the way is unnecessary, and I hate to keep harping on this but she comes home to return to her “safe place” where she doesn’t need the defense of her telekinesis (except when she’s attacked, like by her mom in the original) but to have her just willy nilly moving shit with her mind is more flaunting her power than using it to protect her. Also, the “walk home” is dumb. What reason does she have to destroy everything in her path...she’s supposed to be striking out at those that harmed her not “Godzillaing” through downtown. It just loses the charm of the original and seems to be out of character.
There’s a lot of negative in this review because there’s a lot wrong with the movie technically speaking. However, the positives are still there making this absolutely worth a watch. I honestly think Angela Bettis did a better job than both Sissy Spasic or Cloe Moretz, she is truly disturbing and the filmmakers do a good job of updating the story for the 2000s. Sadly, in the end, the budgetary constrained SOV look and lame camera work coupled with the odd character changes made this specimen nothing more than another failed TV pilot. Scream Factory has an awesome double bluray with this and Rage: Carrie 2 out, I recommend you pick it up and decide for yourself.
5/10