CARRIED AWAY

There is now a fourth screen adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel “Carrie” (one film and three TV versions), this one a “reimagining” on Amazon Prime. I have my difficulties with reimaginings. They are often (but not always) tepid renditions featuring the key elements but with changes, such as modernizations to reflect a more up-to-the-moment ethos, added players, dropped or altered story beats, or worst of all rethinking the main characters. The latest “Carrie” has all of them.

I will admit up front here that I consider Brian dePalma’s 1976 version with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie to be an absolutely chilling masterpiece. But the Amazon version has been getting stellar reviews (7.9 on IMdB versus dePalma’s 7.4), and it was conceived with the participation of Stephen King, so I was game to give it a try.

There are some good alterations. Instead of the bleak outcast played by Sissy Spacek, the latest Carrie White, played by Summer H. Howell, is a bright and cheery teenager glowing with an innocence that we, the viewers, know will eventually be sullied. She is a chipper, generally happy child, less closeted than in the other versions, thus stealing thunder from her descent into madness. And it is that descent that we delight in, the long slow build to an excruciating payoff. Her mother, played by Samantha Sloyan, is a much wider and deeper character than Piper Laurie’s fabulously fanatical, Oscar winning performance. She is written with the requisite cruelty, but tempered by love and caring. For the sake of brevity I won’t go into the new nuances, but suffice it to say that if Piper Laurie is a sledgehammer, Samantha Sloyan is a paintball gun, still painful, but needing multiple shots.

The book and other movies portray a relatively tight story with not all that many beat points, here expanded into an eight hour extravaganza with a plethora of them, sometimes repetitiously so. This allows, of course, for lots of character and incident scenes, some additional characters (one in particular), and a few added high-jinx, Carrie’s metamorphosis into crazed destructo-psychic is drawn out and has both gripping and not so gripping scenes. The addition of cell phones, now so ubiquitous in the worlds of both teenagers and adults, is brilliant and a major driver of the story. Alison Thornton is great as Chris, Carrie’s nemesis, and her bright and slimy manipulations are terrific. I could go into other players, most of them quite good, but y’know—brevity.

It is in the ending that the newest this latest version of “Carrie” stumbles. It’s like going to a new restaurant where the food has all the right ingredients of your favorite dishes, but they just aren’t up to par. Harkening back to Brian dePalma’s version, the entire story of “Carrie” is prelude to an ending dripping with telekinetic fury at the high school prom. Those elements are in the new version, but toned down. Chris’s revenge with a bucket of pig’s blood is still there, but without the delicious and suspenseful machinations of the older version. Yes, there’s the blood and the fire and the watery electrocutions and locked doors, but compared to dePalma’s deft and gleefully vicious camera and editing it is thin sauce on undercooked pasta. Not bad, certainly, and full of terror, but I feel that the finale was given shorter shrift than it deserved.

And the finale isn’t even the finale!  Mad making!  Some new characters have been added, only one of which I thought was worth the effort, and the post-prom denouement instead of being short and sharp, takes the story in a new direction, one that was not well set up in the preceding eight hours. I could rail here, but I don’t want to give anything away and besides, you might actually like it. The series is bookended with a telling device. I thought the opening use of it was clever and wanted to see how it would work out in the end, but when I got to that end I was yelling WTF at the screen. And then there’s yet another scene after that that is… confusing. Sheesh.

So is the latest iteration of “Carrie” worth watching?  Pretty much. There are some very very good performances, especially Ms. Howell in the title role. The visuals are just fine and there are a few haunting images and resonances, but not as aesthetically inspired as the ’76 version. The story progresses nicely, although you can feel the producers and writers stretching the material, which gives it a somewhat bloated feel. I am not trying to damn this with faint praise — it is quite watchable — but the payoff after the long, agonizing build to what I had hoped would be a magnificent finale, was analogous to a teasing, innuendo-laden date that ends up with a flavorless kiss. Next time gimme some tongue.