Film Review: Carrie

In the last five years, Evil Dead, Friday The 13th, Fright Night, I Spit On Your Grave, The Last House On The Left and A Nightmare On Elm Street have been resurrected to varying degrees of mediocrity.

So it’s no surprise that the seminal 1976 thriller, based on Stephen King’s brilliantly crafted story of an outcast schoolgirl who discovers she possesses devastating telekinetic powers, should be given some newy spit and polish.

Award-winning feminist director Kimberly Peirce, who shepherded Hilary Swank to her first Oscar in the harrowing true story Boys Don’t Cry, is an intelligent and intriguing choice for the remake.

She often forges strong emotional bonds to her female protagonists and has charted many of Carrie’s underlying themes – sexual awakening, religious fervour, revenge and retribution –- in her earlier work.

Unfortunately, working within the confines of Lawrence D Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s script that slavishly follows King’s text and the superior 1976 film, Peirce is powerless to embellish the narrative.

All that distinguishes the two incarnations is the inclusion of video sharing as a means of bullying the titular character and a miasma of digital effects in the pivotal prom night sequence.