MOVIE REVIEWS: CARRIE

Reviews for Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Brian De Palma’s 1976 horror classic Carrie range from chilly to lukewarm. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post writes that although Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) copies the original virtually scene by scene, she winds up with a “distressingly anemic” result. “You’re more likely to snooze than be shocked this time around,” he remarks. “Man, what a disappointment,” comments Ty Burr in the Boston Globe. “The new Carrie is a thoroughly dispiriting retread that could have directed by any proficient Hollywood hack.” Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times allows that Peirce has shot the movie “with a great deal of conviction. … But break new ground? It does not.” Similarly Michael O’Sullivan writes in the Washington Post, “Is Carrie a massive improvement over the original? No. De Palma’s film is a classic. … But the new film … works for a new audience.” It’s hard to judge just how well it worked for Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, who says, “In a way, the new Carrie is almost too easy to enjoy. Everything discordant and all the nagging weirdness and strange feelings surrounding the original have been smoothed down, and what we’re left with is a well-made, highly satisfying and not particularly deep high school revenge movie.”