MGM’s recent announcement that Carrie, a remake of Brian De Palma’s 1976 film of the same name, will be moved to October is a bit difficult to read – much like the remake itself. On the one hand, this newest version (another one, starring no one in particular, was made for television in 2002) might be decent in that it stars Chloe Grace Moretz of Kick Ass fame as the titular, sheltered high school girl with telekinetic powers and Julianne Moore as her zealot mother. On the other hand, it’s a remake, and remakes tend to flounder under the weight of their own ambitions – particularly those in the horror genre, with the exception, perhaps, of Let Me In, a remake that is not as good as Let the Right One In, but one that did its inspiration justice. To further occlude this situation is that Let Me In also starred Moretz. And, thus far she’s been pretty solid – even if a film like Dark Shadows verged on highly mediocre.
An October release is also ambiguous. Awards season begins in October, so films like Cloud Atlas (so long as you’re not Time magazine), The Sessions, Frankenweenie, Argo, and Holy Motors (to draw from 2012) opened. However, they were also matched with unformiddable, crowd-drawing opponents like Taken 2, Alex Cross, Here Come the Boom, and Paranormal Activity 4.
The last film might inject the most mystery here. This October, we are destined to receive the fifth installment of a franchise whose intrigue petered out as soon as people Googled the names Katie Featherston and Micah Stone. Regardless, the Activity series continues to draw droves of viewers looking to be frightened – or feign frightening – near and around Halloween. So, I see how Carrie might want to pull some viewers looking for scares into its theaters. But, I’m unsure what the film is conceding. A movie released around Halloween – at least in the Halloween-friendly genre – is hardly ever meant to be a revelation. Often, they’re meant to fill the same holiday spirit as The Santa Clause would in December. There’s no reason to watch Tim Allen kill and then become Santa (pretty sadistic if you think about it) in July, so a November / December release makes sense. The same goes for Paranormal Activity 5, The Seventh Son, or The World’s End (all films to be released in October 2013). Most of these probably won’t be remembered or flocked to after the Halloween hangover, so I wonder whether Carrie thinks it could actually be a draw outside of the holiday gimmick on which its content plays.
The original Carrie was released in 1976 and was a critical, yet surprising, success. Brian De Palma, Sissy Spacek, and John Travolta were all relative unknowns at the time. The first had directed Sisters, which received attention, but Travolta and Spacek were mostly part of television movies and series (Spacek was on the Waltons and Travolta was in the embryonic stages of Welcome Back Kotter) prior to this film. In addition, Stephen King wasn’t the Stephen King he is now – or rather, ten years ago. This was King’s first book and the first film adaptation based on one of his novels.
In other words, this was not a big-budget thriller ($1.8million) whereas the new Carrie has a higher budget, bigger stars, and will be in direct competition to the quality of the original, which again causes me to wonder whether this film could stand on its own outside of Halloween. Perhaps it can, and I hope it does. Moretz is a find young actress and Moore has been great throughout the years. At the same time, it’s still a remake and could very well end up in the same blood-glorifying ethos that followed the remakes of Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
