'Carrie' review: Julianne Moore saves so-so remake

Chloe Moretz, left, and Julianne Moore in a scene from... — Chloe Moretz, left, and Julianne Moore in a scene from "Carrie." Credit: AP

By SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWSOctober 17, 2013

Awash in blood and tears, a woman howls in unspeakable anguish as she gives birth in the harrowing opening moments of "Carrie." Believing the child to be the devil's spawn, she grabs a pair of scissors to stab the infant to death. Only the baby's soft mewling, the pureness of its gaze, spares it from the knife.

That the opening scene is the most chilling in the movie is both the strength of this remake and its key weakness. Director Kimberly Peirce shines such a harsh spotlight on the twisted love between the religious zealot mother, Margaret White (played with heart-pounding menace by Julianne Moore), and her misfit daughter, Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz), that the rest of Carrie's connections to the world seem like an afterthought. Home is the real horror here.

While Peirce pays homage to Brian De Palma's 1976 original by echoing many of the iconic film's seminal moments, she diminishes the bite of the bullying that Carrie endures from her peers. That's a pity because it robs this bloody revenge tragedy of its visceral impact.

For her part, Moretz captures the vulnerability of Carrie, a girl battered on all sides but trying desperately to fit in. Dressed in mousy homemade clothes, her hair in ungainly braids, she's an instant pariah in a teen universe ruled by the vapid and the vain.

Unfortunately, it's hard to care about the school universe because of lackluster performances by Gabriella Wilde as good girl Sue Snell and Portia Doubleday as nasty queen bee Chris Hargensen. Moretz's undeniable spunkiness also makes it hard to shake the feeling that she could hold her own with or without telekinesis.

For the record, Peirce also pumps up the blood-splattering pyrotechnics of Carrie's powers. Once she sheds her meek facade, this is a Carrie who can split the earth beneath her with a stomp of her foot. She always seems more in control of her sorcery and far more formidable than the fragile and delicate Sissy Spacek in the original.

In the end, this Carrie is nobody's victim. Like her mother, she's a woman devoured by fury.