Let’s Briefly Compare The New Carrie Trailer To The Old One, Shall We?
Brian De Palma's 1976 horror classic has been remade with Chloe Moretz in the titular role. Much like the original, it looks really fuckin' creepy.
Yesterday, MGM released the first trailer for their upcoming remake of the classic 1976 Brian De Palma/Stephen King horror flick, Carrie. The new version, directed by Kimberly Peirce of Boys Don’t Cry fame, sees Chloe Moretz reprising Sissy Spacek’s iconic role as the tragic titular character, while Julianne Moore plays her insane religious mother. How does it compare to the original? We have no fuckin’ idea, ’cause the film doesn’t come out till October. But we sure can speculate, just by looking at both trailers!
The creepiness:
Immediately introducing mother and daughter in a fucked-up domestic scene, the new trailer begins with Julianne Moore eerily humming some church hymn, while Chloe Moretz’s muffled screams reverberate sharply from behind some locked basement door. The old trailer kicks off with a look at a happening disco prom and a goofy shot of a young Sissy Spacek getting noogied by some annoying high school jocks. Winner: new trailer.
The actors:
Let’s face it, Sissy Spacek is infinitely weirder looking than Chloe Moretz, which added, uh, something to the original. Still, decades of TV teen dramas have taught us that all kinds of kids get bullied, even the prettier ones. Julianne Moore as Carrie’s nutcase religious mum is a bit harder to swallow though; we keep picturing her saying shit like “wicked haaaaaard” as Nancy Donovan and it makes us laugh heartily inside. That’s not the reaction we should be having to a creepy thriller about a tragically repressed young girl with vicious Satanic powers. Winner: old trailer.
The voice-overs:
Whatever happened to the classic trailer voice-over? Nowadays all we get are lame inter-title descriptions, like some annoying silent film. Take a look at the ’76 version: you can just hear the cigarette fumes circling around the recording booth. Even something as inane as “It’s the night of the senior prommmmmmmm” comes across as terrifyingly foreboding. Winner: old trailer.
The locker room/menstrual scene:
Oh man, does the new trailer make that iconic scene look horrific or what? Sure, no one will ever forget De Palma’s steamily subversive slow-mo opening tracking shot into Carrie’s gym shower misadventures, but the new trailer features cruelly giggling teenage girls recording the whole thing with iPhones while poor Chloe Moretz screams agonisingly on the floor. De Palma’s scene may be visually stunning, but modern-day bullying looks way scarier than the ’70s version. Winner: new trailer.
The end:
The end of both trailers kinda give away the story’s entire climax, but really, we should all know it by now so that hardly matters. The new trailer takes things in an odd direction, though: just after we catch a glimpse of the infamous prom blood bucket scene (which in the new version is so weirdly dark, it looks like a few litres of melted Nutella), we’re left with a toll-free phone number and an odd message to “Call Carrie”. We have no idea what this marketing stunt is (and there’s no way we’re going to check ’cause the phone number is American and we’re fairly poor), but it’s an intriguing touch. We wonder what she says? Probably a creepy prayer to help save our sad souls. Whatever it is, we’re officially shit-scared. Winner: new trailer.