Movie Review: Carrie (2013)

Disclaimer: The blog post you are about to read is a review of a movie which contains strong violence and language, brief sexual content, and some controversial subject matter. The review also contains opinions based on my Christian faith, which I felt had to be done in order to review this film properly. Not every film review will contain discussion based on my faith, but there are a few movies where I absolutely have to, and this is one of those films. Also, I do not own the film I am about to review. All rights go to their proper owners.

Yo yo yo, everybody, and welcome to CurtTheGamer's Awesome Blog! I'm a YouTuber, and also a gamer and fan of many books and movies. One of the things I've been wanting to do for some time are in-depth reviews of some of my favorite (and even not-so-favorite) books, movies, and games. I hope you guys will join me as I finally write these reviews for all of you to read. Maybe I'll give some of you a new perspective on some of these stories. Maybe I'll miss the point of some of them entirely. Maybe I'll over-analyze them to the extreme. Okay, that last part isn't a maybe. I absolutely will be over-analyzing them because that's what I do. It's how I roll. Does it make me a bad reviewer? Well, that's a matter of opinion, but do I think so? Nah...

Okay, on to my very first movie review!

Now, the question I puzzled for awhile was which movie should I review first. I have seen literally hundreds of movies over the years, and it's no easy task deciding what order to review them in. So, I just decided that I'm going to just write reviews of any movie which pops into my head as worthy of a review.

Now, I had some Easter-themed movies that I was going to review first, this being that time of year and all, and drafts of those reviews are actually stored in my blog files right now, though I haven't finished any of them yet. But I just can't find motivation to finish those reviews right now. Sometimes I lose interest in reviews as I'm writing them, and I have to come back to them later. Hopefully I'll gain interest again before the time of year goes away. All I can do is review other movies that have come to mind, so today I'll be reviewing the 2013 remake of Carrie.

This is one of those movies I saw during my time at college. I had a lot of friends there, and every weekend we would watch movies together at night. One night, one of my friends brought out this movie for us to watch.

Now, I have made it no secret in the past that I really really dislike horror movies. They all seem to follow the same formula, with the ending being just as depressing as the rest of the movie, and leaving no hope for the characters no matter how safe they think they are at the time, almost implying there's going to be a sequel but there never being one. They seem twisted and depressing, and maybe that's the entire point and I'm just missing something, but I have seen very few horror movies that I've actually liked.

As such, I didn't initially want to watch this film. I made that clear from the start. But I eventually gave in and watched the film, telling myself that I would stop watching if it didn't catch my interest. After all, I'd seen a few horror movies before, and they didn't give me nightmares. So, I watched the film with my friends... and I actually liked it. I almost wondered why it was considered a horror film in the first place. It was very different from most of the other horror films I'd seen in the past. I asked my friends a few minutes after the film was over, "Can we watch this again tomorrow?" I wanted to see if it would still hold up after watching it more than once. And it did hold up. In fact, it did more than that. It's one of those rare movies that's even better the second time than it is the first time. There are so many details in the movie that you only notice on repeat viewings. Subtle foreshadowing and the like. It blew me away.

Recently, this film came up again in some conversations I've had on YouTube and other places. I was going to save this review for October, you guys, but since I don't really consider this a standard horror flick anyway, I guess it doesn't hurt to talk about it now.

Before I begin this review, I suggest that if you haven't seen this film you stop reading this review right now, seek out a copy of this movie, watch it, then come back to this review. This review will spoil the entire movie. I somehow managed to know next to nothing about the story despite the original 1976 film (which I haven't seen) being a classic that gets quoted a lot, and the story generally being well-known, and I'm glad I managed to have my first experience with the story be to actually watch this movie, because a plot summary really does not do it justice. So watch the film before reading my review, unless you really want to story spoiled for you. Oh, and don't watch the trailer either. It gives away too much, and over-emphasizes the horror and thriller elements. I'm glad I didn't watch that trailer before seeing the movie. You have been warned.

Also, due to the fact that I myself do not own a copy of this film, and I am no longer at college where my friends had the movie, I have had to look up a bunch of clips from the movie on YouTube, and any part of the movie I couldn't find is me going off of memory when I talk about it in the review. So if I get something completely wrong, now you know why.

The film begins in the house of a woman named Margaret White, and we hear her screaming in pain as the camera pans around a bunch of rooms of the house, showing items that have fallen on the floor, including a smashed flowerpot and a Holy Bible. The camera pans up the stairs to her room, where we see her laying on her bed with blood covering the sheets, while she prays for the Lord to help her in her hour of death. She gives a loud, long, painful scream, and then lays still.

And at this point I'm thinking, "I don't think I'm going to like this film."

Margaret feels something crawling down by her legs, and looks down there to see a little baby girl.

Yeah, you guessed it, just as I did. She was pregnant and didn't even realize it.

Margaret shakes her head. "It's a test," she says, and opens her nightstand drawer to pull out... (wait for it) ...a pair of scissors, which she prepares to drive through the baby's head!

Luckily, Margaret seems to come to her senses, as the scissors stop just half an inch from the baby's head, and Margaret looks at the baby crying for a few seconds before putting the scissors down, picking the baby up, and hugging it.

The movie cuts to black with a "boom," and the title Carrie appears on the screen in large red letters.

Then the movie cuts to a scene showing a high school pool. Carrie (the girl Margaret gave birth to) is now a teenager, and getting ready for a game of water volleyball with her gym class. She initially stays way in the back of the pool, so that the ball doesn't ever get to her, and she is clearly a very shy person. However, the gym teacher, Miss Desjardan, encourages the other girls to let Carrie have a try at the game, and she attempts to throw the ball over the net. She fails spectacularly, and accidentally hits a classmate named Sue Snell in the head with the ball. The other girls in the class laugh at how hilarious it was, but when Carrie tries to join in with the laughter, also being a bit amused by it, another classmate, Chris Hargensen, tells Carrie "You eat s**t."

After class, the girls all head into the locker-room to shower and change their clothes. Carrie cautiously approaches the showers, making sure nobody else is in there where they can see her, and begins showering. She begins cleaning herself, when suddenly she gets a traumatizing experience; She has her first period. Since she's never been told what a period is, you can imagine her reaction.

Rushing out of the shower wrapped in a towel, she runs to the lockers where the other girls are changing, and tells them that she's bleeding to death. Unfortunately, these girls are cruel, and when they see how hysterical Carrie is, they chase her back to the showers and begin throwing maxi-pads and tampons at her and laughing at her, all while she still doesn't have a clue as to what's really happening to her. To make matters worse, Chris pulls out her phone and begins recording the event.

Luckily, Miss Desjardan hears the commotion and enters the locker-room to see what's going on. She sees Carrie in hysterics on the shower floor, not being able to listen to anybody, and she slaps her to get her attention and calm her down, which I thought was kind of mean.

As Miss Desjardan attempts to calm Carrie down, the lights in the locker-room begin flickering, and one of them shorts out.

Miss Desjardan takes Carrie to the office where it is explained to her what a period is, and the principal, Mr. Morton, tells Miss Desjardan that the bullying by Carrie's classmates has to stop. Miss Desjardan also apologizes for slapping her. They tell Carrie that they'll be calling her mother to pick her up, and that she is excused from gym class for the rest of the week, as she needs some rest. Carrie begins shaking her head in fear at the thought of her mother hearing about what happened that day, and a water cooler in the back of the room shatters.

As Carrie's mother brings her out to the car, Carrie sees Chris showing some friends the video she recorded in the locker-room. On the way home, Carrie tells her mother that she's sorry that she had to come pick her up that day. Upon reaching the house, Carrie tries to ask her mother why she didn't tell her what a period was, but her mother insists that they go inside to talk about it, despite Carrie's apparent fear of this. Carrie waits in the car as long as she can before a little boy from down the road on a bike tries to scare her, and then falls off his bike when trying to run away, which strikes Carrie as odd.

She enters the house to see her mother pounding her head on the wall over and over, and asks her to stop hurting herself. Her mother turns to her and starts telling her about "sin," and forcing Carrie to repeat it after her, clearly being a teaching that she's forced on her many times. "God created Eve from the rib of Adam, and Eve was weak, and the first sin was the sin of intercourse."

Where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah:

Margaret tries to elaborate further on this flawed teaching, saying that the curse for sin was none other than a blood curse, with a woman only experiencing a period if she does something sexually sinful. Carrie refuses to repeat it after her. "That's not even in the Bible! It doesn't say that anywhere!"

Carrie is right, of course, but there's no convincing her mother of that. She claims that Carrie was showering with other girls, and must have had sinful sexual desires by doing so, which lead to her period. This is despite the fact that Carrie waited for the showers to be empty before starting to shower. When Carrie tries to protest more, Margaret hits Carrie in the face with a Bible and knocks her down to the floor. 

Hurt and in pain, Carrie tries to stand up to her mother by telling her that it was in fact she who sinned in this situation, because she subjected her to that humiliation by deliberately avoiding telling her about periods. This infuriates her mother, and she orders her to go to her closet. When she tries to resist, Margaret grabs Carrie and throws her into the closet where she locks her in, and we see that the closet is filled with numerous pictures of moments in the Bible where people got tortured, fully showing her mother's opinion as to what kind of attitude God has. We see various scars and scratch marks on Margaret's arms when her sleeves get pulled down during the struggle, which also implies that Margaret cuts herself a lot. Carrie screams for her mother to let her out, and a large crack appears in the door out of nowhere, which frightens both of them, and they begin to pray.

Meanwhile, Sue Snell is talking with her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, about the events that went on earlier that day. She feels guilty for teasing Carrie along with the other girls. Tommy tries to make her feel better by admitting to her that he once kicked another kid who was mean to him in the ribs in sixth grade while he was already knocked out by somebody else. But his confession doesn't help matters much because he never apologized to him, while Sue truly wants to apologize to Carrie, but doesn't know if she can do it.

In another part of town, Chris and her friend Tina are with Chris' boyfriend Billy Nolan, who is driving recklessly throughout the city. He claims he lost his licence awhile back, but doesn't need one unless he's going to get caught. They arrive at his house, and Chris begins to upload her video of Carrie to YouTube. Tina tries to protest, as she's also one of the girls teasing Carrie in the video, but eventually gives in, while Billy suggests that Chris put in the description that Carrie's favorite movie is "Bloodsport."

Back at Carrie's house, Margaret finally allows her to leave that closet, and they hug as Carrie tells her mother how much she loves her.

The next day at school, Miss Desjardan confronts the girls who teased Carrie the day before, and tells them that they are going to serve detention with her in gym for the remainder of the week, and if they refuse to show up, they will be banned from the upcoming prom. She also swears at them, which I thought was kind of rude, but that gets taken care of later.

Chris tries to back out of the detention, claiming that Carrie was stupid, and that none of them did anything wrong. She appeals to her former friend Sue to back her up, but Sue has had it with Chris and decides to participate in the detention, leaving Chris to come up with a new plan.

Meanwhile, Carrie goes into the school restroom, where she stares at herself in the mirror, feeling ashamed of herself for being so different from everybody else, and as she stares at her reflection in disgust, the mirror shatters. It's at this moment that she realizes what she can do, and she concentrates on the broken pieces of the mirror and manages to make them move a little bit.

Realizing she has some strange superpower, Carrie goes into the school library, where she searches for books about strange phenomenon, and comes to the conclusion that she has telekinesis, the ability to move objects with the mind.

In her English class, Carrie reads an excerpt from "Samson Agonistes" as her chosen poem for class, which even her own English teacher calls creepy and makes fun of her for, which Tommy (who kind of likes Carrie) is appalled at. He whispers an insult about the teacher and then loudly announces that he thought the poem was cool, which Sue (who is also in the class) takes note of.

Carrie's mother, at her sewing job, sells a red prom dress to Sue's mother in the middle of town. While Sue's mother voices her appreciation for Margaret's sewing skill, Margaret cuts herself while Sue's mother isn't looking, as she believes she has sinned by making the dress red, a color she considers sinful.

Chris meanwhile gets her rich father to confront the principal and Miss Desjardan about Chris being banned from the prom. Miss Desjardan apologizes for swearing at her class, but points out that Chris has been a lot of trouble for the school in the past. Her father tries to play Chris off as a victim by claiming that they have no proof that Chris was even involved with the bullying, but Miss Desjardan points out that Chris was the one who recorded the video on YouTube, and that it is probably still on her phone. Since Chris refuses to show them her phone to see if it's true, this effectively gets her nowhere in getting her prom privileges back.

Furious, Chris confronts Sue in the gym after school and asks why she didn't back her up earlier. Sue tells Chris that they deserve their punishment, and that she truly feels bad for what she did to Carrie. But Chris isn't having any of it. She accuses Sue of having a more selfish motive for running the laps in detention.

"You kept running, Sue, little Sue, because you've been dreaming about senior year, and the perfect boyfriend, and the perfect prom your whole g**d*mned life! You already booked the hotel. Already practiced the sounds you're going to make, you and Tommy making love. That's why you had this bulls**t change of heart. You don't give a s**t about Carrie White, and everybody knows it!"

That night, Carrie practices her newfound powers in her room, and inadvertently causes all the lights in the house to flicker. Her mother gets out a butcher knife and brings it up to Carrie's room, suspicious of some evil thing going on. Carrie pretends to be asleep, and Margaret hugs Carrie and says "I won't ever let anyone hurt you," which Carrie hears.

The next day, Sue tells Tommy to invite Carrie to the prom instead of her, as she still feels she needs to make it up to Carrie for being mean to her. Tommy is reluctant at first, stating that Sue is the one who deserves to go with him, but Sue refuses to go with him, saying that he must go with Carrie, and give her that "one magical night" she was hoping to get for herself. Tommy agrees and goes to invite Carrie during the lunch break, but Carrie believes it's another trick, and rushes to the girl's locker-room, where Miss Desjardan later finds her crying. She tells Carrie that Tommy might have actually meant what he said, and that Carrie, despite what she might think of herself, really is beautiful, and that if she can fix up her untidy hair and get a nice dress, she can be the perfect date for Tommy at the prom.

Later, Miss Desjardan confronts Tommy and Sue, and tells them that they better not be planning anything funny, and that they will be in big trouble if they are. She further confronts Tommy with the fact that people will find him to look ridiculous with Carrie arriving as his date, to which Sue replies, "We don't care how we look."

After school, Tommy goes to visit Carrie at her house, telling her that he really thinks she'll like the prom, and that he looked at the poem she read in class and thought it was really cool. Fearing that her mother might come home at any minute and see them together, Carrie says yes and tells him when to pick her up on Saturday. She spends the rest of the day at the store looking for material to make a dress out of, and Chris sees her on the streets and gets even more angry.

Upon arriving home with the dress material, Carrie's mother scolds her for coming home so late, and is furious when she discovers that Carrie has been invited to the prom. Carrie tries to tell her that she wants to be a normal person, but Margaret tells her that Tommy will hurt her, and that all men are the same. She then tries to take Carrie to the closet again, and in her fear, Carrie accidentally causes the furniture of the living room the levitate, inadvertently revealing her powers to Margaret. Margaret accuses her of being a witch, while Carrie holds her in the air with her powers to keep her from coming closer, and tries her best to explain that her powers are part of her, and not some trick of the devil. After arguing pointlessly, Margaret tells Carrie that she thought she was cancer before she was born, which sends Carrie into a fit of tears before she tells her, "Pray all you want, Momma, but I'm going. And nothing's going to stop me. And I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Meanwhile, Chris, Billy, and some of his friends arrive on a farm to prepare for their revenge on Carrie. Billy leads them over to the pig pen, and tells Chris to pick out the one that reminds her of Carrie the most. After she picks one, Billy sends one of his friends over to smash the pig's head in with a sledgehammer. His friend likes pigs too much to do it though, and Billy snatches the hammer in frustration and gleefully kills the pig with it, afterwards telling Chris to cut open the pig's throat and collect its blood in a large bucket.

The next day, Sue is working on setting up the decorations for the prom in the gym, and starts to feel sick. She runs to the restroom and throws up. At home, she puts her prom dress away in the closet, realizing that she won't be able to go. At home, Carrie begins making her dress, while her mother watches her in fear. At night, Billy and Chris sneak into the school gym and set up the bucket of blood above the stage so they can dump it on Carrie during the prom the next day.

The next night, Carrie is waiting for Tommy in her new dress, which Margaret complains is the "sinful" color of red, despite the fact that it's pink. She tells Carrie that maybe Tommy tricked her and isn't coming to pick her up after all, and says "They'll laugh at you, they're all going to laugh at you." But Tommy does arrive a few seconds later, and Carrie heads downstairs to meet her. Margaret follows Carrie, telling her that they should just burn the dress and forget that the whole thing ever happened. Realizing that Margaret is going to try to drive Tommy away from the house, Carrie uses her powers to lock Margaret in the prayer closet and melt the lock together. She tells her that she really does love her, and she'll try to be home early, before opening the door to greet Tommy.

At the prom, Carrie meets a bunch of Tommy's friends, while Miss Desjardan does a goofy dance to "Live for the Night" that drives everybody hysterical.

Carrie and Tommy dance together to a slow song, while Tommy asks Carrie if she wants to go to a party with him and his friends after the prom king and queen are crowned. Carrie says she'll go as long as she can be back home before eleven, as her mother is waiting for her.

Meanwhile, Margaret is attempting to break out of the closet, and her hands are raw and bloody from her desperate attempts at it.

Back at the school, Chris and Billy sneak in and climb up to the rafters where they've hidden the bucket above the stage with a rope to pull to dump it all. Billy tells Chris that what they're about to do is a crime, and that if she ever tells anybody about it, he will kill her.

At this point, the people running the prom are preparing to have the prom-goers vote for the king and queen. Carrie notices that she and Tommy are both on the ballot, and Tommy says that it wouldn't hurt for them to vote for themselves. Carrie agrees.

A strange little bit in the film involves Carrie getting a paper-cut on her hand from the prom ballot, and then it is never brought up again. I think this was supposed to mirror a scene that was cut from the film where Margaret finally breaks out of the closet and cuts herself on the hand with a butcher knife. I'm glad the scene was cut out, because it's better to have it be as much a surprise to the audience as it is to Carrie when she arrives home and see's that her mother has escaped (well, I just spoiled it for you now, but if took my advice you already saw the movie). So it was good that they cut the scene out. But I can't really figure out why they left in Carrie getting a paper-cut. I personally would have cut that part out as well.

At her home, Sue receives a text from Chris taunting her about the plan to humiliate Carrie, and she rushes out to her car to get to the school in time to stop it.

It turns out that Tina and a few other classmates are in on the plan with Chris, and they swap out the votes with fake ones that have Carrie and Tommy as the winners. Carrie and Tommy are called up onto the stage just as Sue arrives, and she looks around for Chris before seeing her up in the rafters about to pull the rope. Before she can stop her though, Miss Desjardan sees Sue, and, believing that she has come there to ruin the prom for Carrie, grabs her and locks her out of the gym, where Sue can only watch through the window in horror as the bucket of blood is dumped all over Carrie.

One of Chris's friends projects the recording of Carrie having her period on the large screen of the gym for everybody to see (and the order of voice clips and teasing chants from the students in the clip is different from how they were earlier in the movie, some of them being from before Chris even got out her phone to record. Oops), which sends a bunch of students into a fit of laughter. Chris and Billy sneak out of the building during the commotion, but fail to tie the heavy bucket to the rafters tightly enough, causing it to fall on Tommy's head and kill him.

Carrie sees Tommy lying dead and bursts into tears, her sobs eventually turning into anger, as she turns back to the audience full of students and staff and screams in frustration and broken feelings, her powers sending a shock-wave through the entire room that sends one of Sue's friends flying into the window she's looking in at, killing her and putting a blood stain on it. Sue is forced to watch through the window as Carrie holds all the doors shut with her powers and sends multiple students flying around the room and throws prom decorations at them. As two of the students attempt to escape on the bleachers, Carrie closes them and causes one of them to get caught and crushed to death. She zaps Tina a bunch of times with some electrical wires, causing her to back away from them into some burning rubble where her dress catches on fire, causing her to burn to death. She holds down two of the girls that have bullied her in the past, causing them to get trampled on multiple times and likely killed. Lastly, she turns on the sprinkler system, causing multiple students, both innocent and not innocent, to be electrocuted when the water touches the wires. Carrie does use her powers to carry Miss Desjardan away from the disaster though, a silent acknowledgement that she appreciates her caring about her.

Carrie leaves the school and sees Billy and Chris leaving in their car. Furious, she destroys the road ahead of them so that they can't escape. Feeling no remorse (and having no way of knowing that Carrie just caused the disaster), Chris tells Billy to run over Carrie and kill her. Billy rushes at high speed toward Carrie in the car and Carrie stops it with her powers, the sudden stop causing Billy to fly forward and break his neck when his face hits the steering wheel (always wear your seat-belts, folks). Chris then attempts to run over Carrie, but Carrie picks up the car with her powers, and lets it hover in the air, eventually resorting to sending the car at an angle from her and into a gas station where the impact sends Chris flying into the windshield where her face goes through and becomes peirced with thousands of glass shards in what is the most violent and disturbing shot of the entire movie. The gas station then blows up.

Carrie returns home, and there is some weird sideways camera angle that I really don't know what the camera guy was thinking when he shot that. Carrie enters the house and sees that the closet door has a huge hole in it, and she can't find her mother anywhere. She goes upstairs, and we briefly see her mother pass behind her without her noticing, which was a bit chilling. Carrie enters the bathroom to take a bath, and notices the "blood on her hands," which was clearly meant to be both literal and metaphorical at the same time, as Carrie begins sobbing harder than ever as she cleans herself, and if you listen closely you can hear her quietly say, "I'm so sorry."

After cleaning and changing her clothes, Carrie goes out to the hallway, where she she finally sees her mother, and tells her how terrible the prom was. Margaret tells Carrie the she should have killed her when she had the chance. That she and her husband lived without having sex (which she believes is a sin even within marriage) for a long time, until he raped her once, and she liked it. She says she thought she had cancer at first until Carrie was born, and then she tried to kill her, but couldn't bring herself to do it because she loved her so much. She tells Carrie that they will kneel down and pray, and at this moment watching the movie I was like, "Oh no, it's a trick. She's tricking her." And I was right. As they kneel down, halfway through the Lord's Prayer, Margaret pulls out her butcher knife from behind her back and stabs Carrie in the shoulder-blade. Carrie gasps in pain, and accidentally creates another shock-wave that sends her and her mother flying opposite directions, Carrie getting the worst of it by falling down the stairs.

Carrie looks up to see her mother coming down the stairs after her with the knife, and as Carrie begs her mother not to go through with it, her mother responds with, "You know the devil never dies. He keeps coming back. So you got to keep killing him, over and over again."

It wasn't until the second viewing that I really realized the implication of these words. "Keep killing?" "Keeps coming back?" This is implying that Margaret killed her own husband. It all ties together and makes sense. Margaret thought all sex was evil, then her husband had sex with her, and she killed him because she thought he was full of the devil and needed to be killed. Then, she starts feeling pain, thinking that God has cursed her with cancer for liking the sex, but eventually discovers that she was just having a baby because of what her husband had done. She thinks the baby is a product of a sinful experience, and wants to kill her, in order to fully destroy the "devil," but couldn't bring herself to do it until now. It all ties together, and makes a very complex, twisted character out of Margaret.

But there's more. Margaret continues her attempt to kill Carrie, slashing her across the legs and one of her arms during the struggle, and finally attempting to drive the knife through Carrie's head before she uses her powers to stop it half an inch from her face.

Look at these two scenes from the movie: 

Remember that part at the beginning of the movie? This is another thing I didn't notice until my second viewing, but that's another interesting implication right there. It's very very subtle, but the implication is that Carrie had her powers from day one, and, though they did not fully develop for her to use until just a week ago, some small bit of them inside her protected her from death when her mother tried to kill her all those years ago. It wasn't just her mother not being able to bring herself to do it. Carrie's powers halted the scissors and gave her mother more time to think about it.

In any case, Margaret isn't going to think about it this time. She's absolutely going to kill her, trying to push through Carrie's power, and Carrie knows there's only one way to make it out of this alive. With all her strength, Carrie uses her powers to send every sharp object in the house flying towards her mother, and, telling her, "I'm sorry," she pins her to the wall with them, leaving her in the shape of a crucifix, which is kind of creepy, because Margaret is the farthest thing from a Christ-figure in this movie, but I guess it was supposed to be ironic, because Margaret, with her twisted religious beliefs, dies in a twisted religious way.

Not wanting her mother to die, Carrie goes up to her and unpins her from the wall, removing as many sharp objects from her as she can. She lays her mother on the floor, and tells her that she loves her so much, but her mother dies anyway, and Carrie bursts into tears. Then she hears somebody enter the house.

"Carrie," says Sue, approaching her cautiously. "Let me help you Carrie."

But Carrie thinks that Sue was in on the prank at the school, and begins choking her with her powers. "Why can't you just leave me alone?" she asks, sobbing.

"Don't hurt me, Carrie," begs Sue.

"Why not?"asks Carrie. "I've been hurt my whole life." But she appears to truly see that Sue means her no harm, and she lets her go, before picking her mother's body up off the floor, and turning to Sue for help, with her true emotions finally expressed. "I'm scared," she tells her, and the house begins rumbling and shaking before Carrie's fears and pain make her powers start to collapse the house.

Or at least I thought the house was simply collapsing. On my second viewing however, it turns out there were stones falling from the sky onto the house and crushing it. Yeah, Carrie can somehow make stones fall from the sky. I don't see how that would ever make any sense whatsoever. This is telekinesis, not weather-control powers. I honestly would have had the house just collapse if I had made the movie.

Sue runs to Carrie, telling her that they need to escape the house before it crushes them to death, and extends her hand to her. But Carrie detects something in Sue's body, and begins to investigate it with her powers before revealing to Sue the reason she became sick the night before; Sue is pregnant!

Using her powers, Carrie propels Sue from the house to safety, and Sue watches as the house crumbles and crushes Carrie to death, before putting her hand to her stomach in wonder.

Now, after this scene, there are actually two different endings available depending on what format you're watching the movie on.

The first ending is the theatrical ending, which is available on the DVD release of the film, and is likely the ending used when the film is shown on TV. In this ending, Sue is in a courtroom a few weeks after the incident, with a judge questioning her about whether or not she can put the horrific events off as just natural causes, and nothing supernatural. But Sue insists that she knows what she saw. The film cuts to Sue walking through a graveyard, as we hear her voice-over play over the scene:

"You want an explanation? Carrie had some sort of power. But she was just like me. Like any of you. She had hopes and she had fears. And we pushed her. And you can only push someone so far... before they break."

Sue walks up to Carrie's tombstone, covered in graffiti from vandals, and places a flower on it before departing. A wind starts blowing, and cracks appear along the tombstone before we hear Carrie scream, and the film cuts to black.

The other ending is the director's preferred ending, and is available on the Blu-Ray release of the film. My friends had the movie on Blu-Ray, so this was the ending I saw. In this ending, we get the same scene of Sue going to Carrie's grave with the flower, but this time without the courtroom scene or voice-over from Sue. Instead of the part with the grave cracking and Carrie screaming, we instead cut to Sue in the hospital about to give birth to her new baby. She senses that something isn't right, and begins screaming in intense pain. The doctors attempt to calm her down, and they encourage her to keep pushing. Sue attempts to breathe and calm down. Suddenly, instead of a baby, Carrie's arm, covered in pig blood, bursts out of her and grabs her by the arm. She screams, and we suddenly cut to the still pregnant Sue in the bedroom of her house, as her mother tries to wake her up from the nightmare she's having. After waking up, Sue continues screaming, as her mother tries to calm her down and assure her that everything will be okay. Cut to black.

I prefer the second ending. It's not just because it's the one I saw first, but I also think it suits the film better. The first ending does nothing but some cliche horror film ending with a cracking tombstone that doesn't really accomplish anything. It doesn't say anything about the characters, or how they are influenced by the horrific events that happened. It just does some cliche horror thing. The second ending, on the other hand, shows the trauma Sue is going through because of the horrific events that happened at the prom. It shows her clearly having a nightmare, and since her mother is there trying to help her, it's likely not the only time Sue's had a nightmare like this at the time we see this particular scene. It also says something about Sue's guilt and fears. Sue feels guilty for bullying Carrie in the locker-room, and wanted to make it up to her, but things just ended up worse. Now that Sue has the responsibility of raising a child, she fears that she might end up raising her child the wrong way, and her daughter will end up being broken just like Carrie. This is a way better ending. It shows that everything isn't alright after the events of the film, that there were long-lasting effects.

It's kind of a shame that audiences in the theatres didn't get to see the better ending for the film. I imagine somebody in the studio thought that the scene was too different in tone from the rest of the film, and indeed it is. But I think that was kind of the point. The film takes its time building up to the horrific events, being more sad and depressing than anything else, and then drops the biggest scare during the last thirty seconds of the film. I sure jumped out of my seat the first time I saw it! It's just a better ending. We do lose the nice scene of Sue giving the speech in court about Carrie, but I can see how some people might see that as hitting them over the head one of the main points of the movie and talking down to them, so I can see why it wasn't used in the second ending. And if they really wanted an ending that wasn't off from the tone of the rest of the movie, why didn't they just end the movie with Sue walking away from the grave? Why the part with the tombstone cracking? What's up with that?

Anyway, I really liked this movie. Now that I've given a big long and detailed plot summary, let me talk about the rest of the aspects of this film, starting with the cast.

The main role of this film is of course Chloe Grace Moretz as Carrie White. Moretz does a very good job portraying all of Carrie's emotions. She is very believable as a shy girl from an abusive home, and also does a good job with the other aspects of the character. When she is told to go to the prayer closet, you can hear the fear in her voice. When her mother discovers her powers, you can hear the desperation and fear and see it in her eyes as she tries to reason with her. Most important are the events near the end of the film. One could easily have made things more ambiguous or left the audience with a mistaken impression of what happened. But that does not happen here. Carrie's breaking point is very clearly the death of Tommy, the first real friend she ever had, and the only person who had ever truly understood her. And Carrie's rage at the prom is clearly shown to be one-hundred percent deliberate, a terrible revenge that she later rightfully regrets, as she washes herself at home and we hear her quiet "I'm so sorry." Her love for her mother is too great for her to ever report her to the police, no matter how abusive she is to her, and even when she's forced to kill her at the end, it is reluctant and in self-defense. We feel for Carrie as she cries at the fact that she just killed her mother and almost certainly sent her to Hell. It's very sad watching this portrayal of such a broken individual as she goes through so much pain.

The other main role is Gabriella Wilde as Sue Snell, and she is my favorite character in the entire film, and probably the most sympathetic. A bad screenwriter could easily have not made the motivations of the character clear enough, and made it seem like Sue was in on the prom prank, but that doesn't happen here. Sue is very clearly remorseful of her bullying towards Carrie in the locker-room and very clearly wants to make it up to her. She witnesses the entire prom massacre through the window of the gym, is fully aware of what Carrie is capable of, and yet goes to Carrie's house anyway, risking her life to try to help her. And though she doesn't manage to save her, she and Carrie still depart with an understanding of each other. All of this is wonderfully portrayed by Wilde.

Then we have Sue's boyfriend, Tommy Ross, excellently portrayed by Ansel Elgort. Tommy cares about Carrie a lot, and is willing to take her to the prom even if it means not being able to take his own girlfriend. He is also not afraid to voice his disgust at those who bully and make fun of Carrie. Despite genuinely liking Carrie, he doesn't cheat on Sue, and instead takes Carrie to the prom as a good friend. he is the first friend Carrie really ever has, and his death shatters Carrie badly.

But a good film also has its villains, and this film is no exception.

First is Portia Doubleday as Chris Hargensen, and oh boy is she really into the role. She is not sympathetic at all, but is purely vengeful and bratty, not caring about anybody else. This is a character we all love to hate, and in the end she does not turn over a new leaf. She attempts to murder Carrie, and pays for it with her death.

The other main villain is Julianne Moore as Margaret White, Carrie's mother. A religious extremist, Margaret is pure evil, and doesn't care about anyone as long as she can avoid the "devil" that she thinks keeps returning. Her abuse of Carrie is cruel, and her attempted murder of her both at the beginning and end of the film makes her lose any sympathy that she might have. The portrayal is subtle, but also very unsettling, and Moore did a good job portraying the character.

And I think that's a good point to explain some of the problems I had with this film, as good as it was.

The portrayal of religion is by far the most controversial aspect of this movie among Christians, so it may surprise you that it didn't really bother me all that much. Granted, it still did bother me a little bit, as it should. For me, it's kind of relevant to portray these kinds of people, as there actually are people kind of like that in real life:

But at the same time, I have to wonder whether this was an attempt to portray an actual problem, or whether this is another one of those times where the media takes a few people and tries to use this as a stereotype for religion in general, to make them all look like that.

Make no mistake about it, Margaret White is certainly not a Christian. She may claim to be one, but her flawed view of God as vengeful and angry, as well as her abusive harsh nature toward everybody, including her own daughter that loves her, and her teachings contrary to scripture (as rightly pointed out by Carrie), make her very very un-Christian and more insane than anything else. At the same time though, Carrie and her mother are the only two people who are explicitly religious in the film, which is kind of problematic, because we don't really see the positive side of religion.

Or course, there is one small possible exception to Margaret and Carrie being the only religious characters in the film, and that comes from the final shot of (the director's preferred ending of) the film:

Sue has a cross on the wall of her room. This does open a few questions. Are Sue's parents Christians? Is Sue herself a Christian? Did she maybe start studying about Christianity after Carrie's death? We never get any answers to those questions. Unlike Carrie, Sue openly uses profanity throughout the movie, and she also has sex with Tommy, who she isn't married to. So this kind of creates more questions than answers, but maybe that was the point of the film.

Aside from these problems, there's a truckload of profanity in the film, as well as a brief sex scene (though thankfully there's no nudity). The way the film is shot and edited at some points is also odd at times, with the aforementioned sideways camera angle when Carrie walks home from the prom, the video recorded of Carrie's period being inconsistent with the event when it's shown at the prom, the paper-cut bit, and also the shot where the blood is dumped on Carrie, which is very obvious CGI that isn't helped a bit by the fact that the shot gets repeated from multiple different angles.

The film was also criticized upon release for a bunch of scenes shown to test audiences that were cut out before release. There are many petitions online from people who are trying to get the studio to release an extended edition of the film, but, quite honestly, I prefer the film the way it is now. It's fast-paced, and doesn't get boring for a single minute. From both the released deleted scenes, and scenes I've only heard about, I think the majority of them were rightfully cut from the film. They throw off the pacing, create more questions than answers, lose the subtlety of parts of the movie, and in some cases even ruin some of the characters' motivations and make them look like jerks.

One aspect of this movie that doesn't get enough praise is the soundtrack. The music is wonderful. Not a single bit of music is wasted in the film, and every scene gets music that fits the tone. During the sad scenes, we get sad music. During Carrie's massacre at prom, we get epic music that fits Carrie's rage. During the part where Carrie's mother tries to kill her at the end, we get suspenseful music. During the final scene where Carrie propels Sue from the house, we get triumphant, but still sad, music.

Aside from other possible negatives I have about this film, I'm just going to say it right now, in case any of you didn't figure it out; This is absolutely not a family movie. It fully deserves its R-rating and apart from the bad language and sexual content, it is also a very dark depressing film, and the violence, though most of it comes near the end, is extreme. I personally would hesitate to show this film to anybody under the age of seventeen, because I think you have to be old enough to understand the story, which of course is structured to allow for more than one interpretation.

One of these involves the portrayal of Carrie's powers. Despite what her mother might insist upon and keep telling herself, Carrie is not a witch. She has these powers whether she wants them or not, and learning to control them is better than letting them happen unwittingly and causing major accidents to occur. But we are never told why exactly she has these powers. Carrie herself theorizes that the powers are inherited, having either come from her father who she never met, or from her mother's family skipping a generation. But this is never confirmed in the film itself. Other fan theories exist online about how she got her powers, one of my favorites being that this movie takes place in the same universe as the Xmen. But (warning: here's where I'll be getting a bit more into my Christian faith), regardless of how exactly she got this power, it can be utilized as a good metaphor for the gifts God gives us. We all are given certain gifts, and we need to learn to use them the right way. And, like Carrie, some of us might go the wrong way and abuse those gifts, and use them for selfish and vengeful purposes. I doubt this is what the people who made the film had in mind, but it does strike me as relevant when thinking about this film.

In terms of comparing to real life, bullying is ugly, and causes many terrible things to happen as a chain-reaction. Though obviously nowhere near as horrific as what's portrayed in this film, bullying does lead to broken people, death, and all sorts of other horrible things.

And that's why I kind of wonder why this is even considered a horror movie in the first place. It certainly is a dark film, and it does have elements of horror and thriller, but those take more of a backseat to what is, in my mind, a tragedy. This movie is a tragedy. The plot structure, with the bullying by the characters towards Carrie, the death of many of the people at the prom, and Carrie and her mother's death at the end, are all elements of a tragedy, and that's what I believe the primary genre of this film is. It was certainly more sad than anything else.

As I said before, this is a remake of a film from 1976, and it is actually based on a book by Stephen King (who I'm not really a fan of. Sorry, King fans). And there is actually another adaptation of the book from 2002. But to be honest, I don't really have any interest in the book or the other movie versions. To me, this movie version is the story of Carrie, and I'm afraid that if I read the book or saw the other movie versions that it might ruin this movie for me. Maybe one of these days I will, but for now I'm going to end this review, and I hope you guys will come back here for the review of my next movie, whenever that is...