NBC's Carrie

A Review

by MattBoySlim

Ok. I just turned off my TV after watching the new made-for-TV Carrie remake. I'll preface by saying that Carrie is one of the few Stephen King books I have yet to read. I have, however, seen the original movie quite a few times.

I have been taken by a sudden urge to write a review, and at first I was tempted to keep it to one word, being: "BLECCCCKKKKHHHH!!!!" Then I thought I might be called upon to expand on that thought. So, here's a quick, loosely organized grouping of my thoughts on this movie.

Direction.

Horrible. Half of the scenes were filmed using the all-popular "shaky-cam". I guess the director was trying to go for a "documentary" or "indie" feel. Or maybe he said, "Hey, the Blair Witch did okay. Maybe what made that so scary was the bad camera work!" In the end, it just looked plain stupid and crappy. Less fartsy, more artsy.

Also, maybe this was this guy's first horror movie. Every part that was meant to make you jump came with no set-up. Usually, you have suspense before a good jump. These looked like they were put in as an after thought. "Oh, yeah. Boo. Ok, let's move on." I found no part of this movie to be genuinely frightening, let alone creepy. Then again, maybe I'm desensitized by the sheer brain-melting horror that is The Ring.

Acting.

Pretty damn bad. Maybe this was also partly the director's fault, who knows. God knows I wouldn't tell people, "No!!! In this scene we need less emotion!!! You, throw the lines out the window and make them up!! I don't care if you cant ad-lib, just do it!!!! Perfect!!!! Cut!" Maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Some performances were passable. Geez, I'm just not used to writing bad reviews.

Special Effects.

Not too special. There was this one part where all the high school kids were making fun and snickering at her in a Chemistry class, and she was building up to a big old Akira-style flip out for about 2 minutes straight. It was excruciating, but I waited for the cool pay-off. Y'know what it was? A bent ruler, a bent pen and a cracked desk. Ugh. They had great ideas, near the end. After the fire, Carrie walked through the town leaving a burning swath of destruction. Sadly, the CG couldn't convey the awesome power they had obviously wanted to show. It became more distracting than anything else. Bah, oh well. They tried, I guess.

All in all, it was pretty much a waste of two hours. Of course, it's not like I would've gotten up and exercised for those two hours, but still. I could've been playing Time Splitters 2. Blech, I almost forgot…throughout the entire movie, the bumpers before the commercial consisted of little clips of the famous pig blood scene, as if to say, "Hey! Remember this from the old movie?!?! It was awesome, huh? Just wait until you see what we did with it!!" They ended up showing the whole thing bit by bit before it actually happened. It wasn't even that great when it did. That feeling right there describes the entire experience.

Here's the rating scale:

1 = Guaranteed to make you spill your soda all over your pants with comatose boredom.
2 = Guaranteed to make you nod off slightly, spilling some soda and waking up immediately.
3 = Guaranteed to make you spill your soda all over your pants with a mild "creeped out" feeling.
4 = Guaranteed to make you jump once or twice, spilling some soda on the crotch of your pants each time.
5 = Guaranteed to make you spill soda all over your pants in abject horror, soaking you from belt to cuff.

I give NBC's Carrie a 1.7. Just for perspective, I give The Ring a 9. And just so you know, that time....it wasn't soda.