Opened 40 Years Ago: KNIGHTRIDERS (4/10/1981)

 

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KNIGHTRIDERS opening in Toledo, OH on 5/15/1981

In Theaters: DOCTOR SLEEP (2019)

DOCTOR SLEEP
(US - 2019)

Written and directed by Mike Flanagan. Cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis, Carl Lumbly, Bruce Greenwood, Zahn McClarnon, Emily Alyn Lind, Robert Longstreet, Carel Struycken, Jocelin Donahue, Zackary Momoh, Alex Essoe, Henry Thomas, Jacob Tremblay, Nicholas Pryor, Selena Anduze, Catherine Parker, Roger Dale Floyd, Dakota Hickman, Violet McGraw, Michael Monks, Hugh Maguire, Sadie Heim, KK Heim, Danny Lloyd. (R, 152 mins)

There are no shortage of reasons to be apprehensive about a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 classic THE SHINING. It's been almost 40 years since it opened to middling reviews and disappointing box office (and got Razzie nominations for Kubrick and co-star Shelley Duvall) only to become one of the most iconic masterpieces of cinema and a ubiquitous pop culture touchstone, even though Stephen King, the author of the 1977 source novel, still hates it. The sequel is based on King's own 2013 follow-up Doctor Sleep, and isn't considered one of his better books. Mike Flanagan, who did as good as job as he could turning King's almost unfilmable GERALD'S GAME into a Netflix film a couple of years ago, opted to fashion the movie version of DOCTOR SLEEP as both a King adaptation and a direct sequel to Kubrick's film. Flanagan (OCULUS, HUSH, Netflix's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE) is one of the top contemporary horror genre craftsmen, but to say DOCTOR SLEEP is a daunting task is an understatement. He seems to realize the gravity of this endeavor and the time and thought he put into his screenplay and his choices as a director are ample proof that the need to do right by both King and Kubrick was a responsibility that he absolutely did not take lightly.

To put this on a more personal level, THE SHINING is my all-time favorite film. I first saw it at the drive-in with my parents in 1980 when I was seven years old. Maybe they couldn't find a sitter, maybe they assumed I'd go to sleep, but all I know is, once the plot kicked into gear, I started paying attention and I was riveted from the backseat of the car. Partially because it was obvious that I shouldn't be watching it ("Close your eyes!" my mom said as the woman in room 237 got out of the tub; I didn't), and partially from the story, which I probably didn't fully get, but also from the look of it. My dad started taking me to movies a couple of years earlier, around the time I was five, and I remember seeing JAWS, JAWS 2, SUPERMAN, and ROCKY II on the big screen and I remember watching the good parts of THE GODFATHER SAGA (the re-edited network TV version of the first two GODFATHER films) with him, but they didn't look like THE SHINING. I didn't realize it at the time, but Stanley Kubrick would be the first instance where I was actively aware of who the director was and that it was a person of importance. I've seen THE SHINING countless times since. I stopped keeping track at 100 and that was probably 20 years ago. I've been obsessed with it since the summer of 1980. It was one of the defining moments of my life. The dialogue is committed to memory. I could recite the whole thing for you. My point is, for someone whose love of THE SHINING is somewhere in the vicinity of the maniacal, it would be a small victory if DOCTOR SLEEP simply managed to not be terrible, and even that's only because Flanagan's involvement meant approaching it with cautious optimism instead of immediate dismissal.

Running an epic 152 minutes (eight minutes longer than THE SHINING), DOCTOR SLEEP occasionally feels like it should be an HBO or Netflix limited series, but works just fine as a feature film. Flanagan paces it like an engrossing novel, cutting back and forth between three different narratives that eventually intersect. That's following an opening prologue set in 1980, just after young Danny Torrance (Roger Dale Floyd) and his mom Wendy (Alex Essoe, doing a spot-on Shelley Duvall) have relocated to Florida following their horrific winter at the Overlook Hotel. Danny still "shines" and is still haunted by the ghosts of the hotel, particularly the rotting woman in the bathtub in room 237, and is frequently counseled by the spirit of Overlook chef and fellow shiner Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly in place of the late, great Scatman Crothers), who was killed in Kubrick's film but survived in King's novel, and whose presence is a perfect example of creative ways Flanagan does his best to stay true to both Kubrick and King.

Cut to 2011, and adult Dan (Ewan McGregor) hasn't dealt with the trauma of his childhood and is now an alcoholic drifter some years after his mother has passed on. At the same time, a nomadic cult known as "True Knot," led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), moves around the country seeking recruits as well as victims, psychically-gifted children that they kill to absorb their life force--"steaming," as they ingest the steam that exits their mouths as they die, thus healing wounds and holding off the aging process, enabling them to live hundreds of years and adapt to a changing society. Dan ends up in a small town where he befriends Billy (Cliff Curtis), a recovering alcoholic who knows one when he sees one. He sponsors Dan in AA and helps him achieve sobriety and get a job as an orderly at a local hospice, where he earns the nickname "Doctor Sleep" for his ability to sense, via his psychic abilities, when a resident is about to die. At this same time, Dan starts getting vague "shining" messages from a young girl named Abra, who then goes silent for seven years. Cut to 2018, Dan is still sober and still working at the hospice. True Knot is still on a quiet rampage undetected, though their latest victim is a child (Jacob Tremblay) who shines to a now-13-year-old Abra (Kyliegh Curran), who then tries to alert Dan. She even tracks him down, and while he offers sympathy and describes his experiences with The Shining, he advises her to keep her head down and ignore it. But as Abra continues to psychically connect in a dangerous game with Rose the Hat and her minions, the stakes increase and Dan has no choice but to help her, especially when Rose realizes Abra's abilities far exceed her own.

After the 15 minute opening sequence taking place in 1980, DOCTOR SLEEP settles into its own groove and the overt SHINING references are dialed down, at least in terms of the developing plot (check out the visual shout-out to the Overlook manager Stuart Ullman's office when Dan meets with the head of the AA group, played by Bruce Greenwood in a rare sympathetic role). This gives Flanagan enough opportunities to make the film his own, and during this majority of its duration, it sticks generally close to King's book (the "True Knot" cult is very reminiscent of the RV-travelling vampire clan in NEAR DARK). One of King's major gripes about Kubrick's film is that he felt it lost the humanity and the central themes of alcoholism, violence, and the traumatic effects of abuse on a family in exchange for the "coldness" that typified Kubrick's work. Flanagan keeps those ideas intrinsic to the heart of DOCTOR SLEEP, with McGregor very believable as a man still haunted by ghosts both literal and figurative, whether it's the woman from room 237 or the psychological specter of an abusive father who tried to kill him and his mother, eventually using alcohol and self-destruction as the quickest coping mechanism. DOCTOR SLEEP resonates on a more emotional level than THE SHINING ever could, especially in the few scenes where the spirit of Hallorann appears (it should be mentioned that Lumbly is just terrific here). A SHINING fan might actually get a little choked up when Hallorann tears Danny a new one over his reluctance to help Abra, telling him "You was just a kid when you wandered into my kitchen all those years ago and here I am, still on the hook." As good as those dramatic elements are, it's Ferguson who creates the most indelible character with Rose the Hat, who's quirky and terrifying at the same time ("Well, hi there!").

It's not until about the two-hour mark that Flanagan has a Kubrickgasm and takes a deep dive into full-on SHINING worship. Some may feel it's an awkward shift in style and tone, but I found the transition to be handled in an effective way that, in lesser hands, would've seemed like a tacked-on compromise akin to the out-of-nowhere, studio-mandated exorcism finale in THE EXORCIST III. On the run with Abra, Dan decides to lure Rose the Hat to the long-shuttered, boarded-up, moldy-walled ruins of the Overlook, where he's been mentally locking away the spirits that have haunted him all these years. It's giddily, dizzyingly surreal to see McGregor's Dan wandering through almost perfect recreations of those legendary sets at England's Elstree Studios (except for one thing--there were steps going into the Torrance apartment). Everything is as it was left in 1980, looking like a combination of a crime scene and a SHINING museum (plus there's that droning, rhythmic beat, a crescendoing "Dies Irae," and a little "Midnight, the Stars and You"). The attention to detail is actually breathtaking at times (even after Steven Spielberg's tribute in READY PLAYER ONE), and it results in what should be one of the most crowd-pleasing comeuppances in recent memory once Rose the Hat shows up for the big showdown in the Colorado Lounge.

But something unexpected has happened: DOCTOR SLEEP flopped its opening weekend. Nobody cares. There's a million ways this could've shit the bed, and almost any other filmmaker would've been content to play it safe and rely on easy SHINING fan fiction. Flanagan doesn't cave to the lowest common denominator, and maybe that's why it's not playing well or bringing in the crowds despite acclaim from critics and hardcore SHINING fans. IT kickstarted a King renaissance a couple of years ago, but are we already suffering from fatigue and burnout? The inferior IT: CHAPTER TWO made a lot of money a couple of months ago but it definitely didn't have the fan adoration or the lasting impact of its predecessor (and does anyone remember we had a new PET SEMATARY earlier this year?). Or do the kids just not know THE SHINING like Warner Bros. assumed? I saw the 4K restoration of THE SHINING theatrically in September and there were a lot of younger people in attendance, and "Here's Johnny!" didn't even register with them. They don't know who Johnny Carson is. Has it been too long between films to attract anyone but the most devout--and likely middle-aged and older--superfans? A similar fate befell the 35-years-later sequel BLADE RUNNER 2049, which opened big with devotees of the 1982 Ridley Scott classic but dropped nearly 66% in its second weekend after everyone who wanted to see it saw it immediately. DOCTOR SLEEP is an entirely different beast than THE SHINING, but speaking as someone who regards the Kubrick film as sacrosanct, it surpasses all expectations and is the most worthwhile sequel that a Shining and SHINING fan could hope to get, and maybe the best big-screen Stephen King adaptation since 1994's THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Like THE SHINING, DOCTOR SLEEP will stand the test of time and hopefully find an audience on streaming and cable. In the meantime, I just don't know what the hell moviegoers want anymore.

In Theaters: IT: CHAPTER TWO (2019)

IT: CHAPTER TWO
(US - 2019)

Directed by Andy Muschietti. Written by Gary Dauberman. Cast: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgard, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean, Jaeden Martell, Wyatt Oleff, Jack Dylan Grazer, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis, Chosen Jacobs, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Teach Grant, Nicholas Hamilton, Javier Botet, Xavier Dolan, Jess Weixler, Taylor Frey, Molly Atkinson, Joan Gregson, Will Beinbrink, Stephen King, Peter Bogdanovich, Stephen Bogaert, Luke Roessler, Jackson Robert Scott, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Joe Bostick, Megan Charpentier, Juno Rinaldi, Owen Teague, Jake Sim. (R, 169 mins)

A blockbuster hit that currently stands as the highest-grossing horror film of all time (by present-day dollars and not by ticket sales or adjustment for inflation), 2017's IT, an adaptation of the first half of Stephen King's gargantuan 1986 novel, ushered in an era of renewed interest in the legendary author's work. This includes the Netflix films GERALD'S GAME and 1922, this year's remake of PET SEMATARY, this fall's DOCTOR SLEEP, a sequel to both King's novel The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film version, which King has spent nearly 40 years criticizing, and several other announced film and TV projects in various states of development or production. Every generation has their genre touchstones, and IT--in many ways a hard-R GOONIES--has become a gateway film for impressionable young horror fans. Every generation's gateway is different, and just as aging purists who cut their teeth on Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi dismissed the blood and guts horror that gained traction in the 1970s, it's easy to for us jaded cynics now in our 40s to take a shit all over whatever it is "the kids" are into and inevitably sound all Old Man Yells at Cloud. I liked IT--it didn't blow me away, but I can see where a 13-year-old might consider it a watershed moment that hopefully leads to further exploration. IT was entertaining but it relied heavily on the now-overused trope of "scary clowns" as well as the crutch of nostalgia, especially by updating the setting of the childhood section of the novel from 1958 to 1989. Of course this also meant recurring invocations of everything 1989, from BATMAN to LETHAL WEAPON 2 to A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5, and a running gag about New Kids on the Block. This retro fetishizing of everything '80s (all that's missing is a John Carpenter-esque synth score) is representative of the move in horror toward The Reference--the AMERICAN HORROR STORY/STRANGER THINGSification of the genre, if you will. And returning director Andy Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman push that even further in IT: CHAPTER TWO.

Running a bladder-challenging 169 minutes--a mere three minutes shorter than THE GODFATHER--IT: CHAPTER TWO is a disappointing sequel. With the first film's characters reconvening in 2016 after 27 years apart, the film is a success in terms of its effective casting choices and finding actors who, for the most part, strongly resemble the younger versions of their characters. When murders begin taking place in Derry 27 years after "It" was defeated, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa), the town librarian and lone member of "The Losers" who never moved away, reaches out to his six childhood friends spread all across the country--Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy), a novelist and screenwriter with a habit of writing bad endings; Richie Tozier (Bill Hader), a popular but hacky stand-up comic who doesn't even write his own material; Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone), still a nervous hypochondriac who works insurance risk assessment and married a woman just like his mother (and played by the same actress, Molly Atkinson); Ben Hanscom (Jay Ryan), now an architect who lost all the weight that made him a target of incessant childhood bullying; Stanley Uris (Andy Bean), who grew up to be an accountant; and Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain), a successful fashion designer stuck in an abusive marriage. The reunion is one short when childhood memories come back to Stanley, who commits suicide rather than face the manifestation of It in Pennywise the clown (Bill Skarsgard). Those youthful traumas are only remembered by Mike, who informs the others that once you leave Derry, the memories slowly fade away. But with "It" rearing its ugly head again and the body count rising, the other Losers begin to remember. Through his research, Mike learns that the only way to defeat It is by performing "The Ritual of Chud," a Native American tribal rite that requires them to find one artifact from their childhood before venturing deep into It's lair underneath Derry.

The camaraderie of the young cast of IT--who also appear here in new scenes--was probably its most successful aspect aside from Skarsgard's wild performance as Pennywise. As in IT, the actor is too often replaced by herky-jerky CGI enhancement that almost makes his very presence pointless. IT: CHAPTER TWO, however, spends much of its length with the adult Losers on various solo quests to obtain their artifacts, during which time they have their own confrontations with the past and run-ins with It. There's also the grown-up bully Henry Bowers (Teach Grant), busted out of a mental institution by It in the form of the decayed corpse of his childhood partner-in-crime Patrick Hockstetter (Owen Teague); a little boy (Luke Roessler) who lives in Bill's childhood home and is a new target of It; and Ben's still-unrequited love for Beverly, and these are just some of the too many subplots that IT: CHAPTER TWO has to juggle while jettisoning key characters like Bill's movie star wife Audra (Jess Weixler) and Beverly's asshole husband Tom (Will Beinbrink), who are quickly introduced and never seen again, and still managing to find time for a jokey Stephen King cameo. The film seems long for the sake of being long, and certainly the interminable artifact quests, which constitute almost the entire second hour, could've been condensed or perhaps would've played better if this were made into the limited cable series that it often seems to be emulating, especially with the extended wrap-up that feels more like a series finale than the ending of a movie.

The MVP standout is Hader, whose grown-up Richie is given a new layer of characterization that could've easily come off as woke pandering but is brought to life with heartfelt empathy by the SNL vet, best known for his comedic skills but someone I can easily see morphing into a versatile dramatic actor of the Micheal Keaton variety. As it is, IT: CHAPTER TWO is the HOBBIT of Stephen King adaptations. For all its bloat and overlength despite dumping huge chunks of the novel, it's a story that could've easily been told in two hours, but its predecessor was such a success that Muschietti was likely given carte blanche to run as long as he wanted. It has its moments, but they're spread out over the nearly three-hour run time. Any experienced horror fans will see the jump scares coming a shot before they do since Muschietti's set-ups are all the same, and Pennywise's now-repetitive antics seemed much scarier when they were aimed at the childhood-era Losers (and nothing here even comes close to the terrifying slide projector scene in the first film). Plus, the endless referencing and shout-outs--to things like THE THING, ALIENS, THE SHINING, STAND BY ME, THE LOST BOYS, and even Hader is forced to utter a groaner in the form of DIE HARD's most iconic line in the final battle with Pennywise--just feels lazy. Right around the point when adult Eddie's frightful run-in with It in the dank, cavernous basement of the Derry pharmacy is punctuated by what might go down as the dumbest and most pointless needle-drop in film history in the form of Juice Newton's 1981 hit "Angel of the Morning," I was pretty much over this chapter of IT.

In Theaters: PET SEMATARY (2019)

PET SEMATARY
(US - 2019)

Directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer. Written by Jeff Buhler. Cast: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jete Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, Obssa Ahmed, Alyssa Levine, Frank Schorpion, Sonia Maria Chirila, Suzi Stingl. (R, 101 mins)

Stephen King has long considered his 1983 novel Pet Sematary his scariest work. It was certainly his darkest to that point, so much so that he sat on it for a few years, feeling he'd "gone too far this time." A hit movie version arrived in 1989 after several years in development, including a period where George A. Romero was attached to direct. It was ultimately helmed by music video vet Mary Lambert (best known for several of Madonna's most popular videos of the era), with King writing the screenplay himself and being an on-set presence to ensure that it was being done properly. Of course, King took liberties in streamlining the transition from page to screen, and while it had some flaws and it's certainly no CARRIE, THE SHINING, MISERY, or THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, it remains on the side of the better King adaptations, especially when held up against the likes of, say, 1990's GRAVEYARD SHIFT, 1995's THE MANGLER, 2016's CELL, or 2017's THE DARK TOWER. King adaptations never really stopped being a thing, but the blockbuster success of 2017's IT seems to have kickstarted a resurgence in their major studio viability, which has led to another go at PET SEMATARY. King didn't have anything to do with this new version, which was scripted by Jeff Buhler (THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, THE PRODIGY), who rewrote an initial treatment by Matt Greenberg, who had some experience adapting King in the past, having written 2008's 1408 and 2014's straight-to-DVD MERCY, based on King's short story "Gramma." It's directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, the team behind 2014's STARRY EYES, one of many wildly overpraised indie horror films deemed "an instant classic" until something else came out the next week.

Having revisited it in preparation for this remake, PET SEMATARY '89 has aged better than expected, and it still has some chillingly effective moments throughout, though there was undoubtedly room for improvement. To its credit, PET SEMATARY '19 does address a few of those issues, starting with Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz being better actors than Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby, and the long-brewing discord between the main character and his disapproving father-in-law is conveyed by a few seething, silent glares rather than the hysterically overwrought, corpse-tumbling-out-the casket funeral brawl in the 1989 film, which is straight from the book but didn't really work on the screen. PET SEMATARY '19 maintains the same core premise as the novel and the original film, with Dr. Louis Creed (Clarke) and his family--wife Rachel (Seimetz), eight-year-old daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence), toddler Gage (played by twins Hugo and Lucas Lavoie), and cat Church--moving to the rural Maine town of Ludlow when Louis gets a position in the ER at the University of Maine. Behind their property is, as the misspelled sign states, a "Pet Sematary," where generations of Ludlow children have laid their beloved cats and dogs to rest. Their elderly neighbor Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) tells them all about it and forms a grandfatherly bond with Ellie. It's Jud who finds Church dead on the side of the road, struck by one of the many speeding semis that barrel past the house. Despite insisting to a hesitant Rachel that they need to be truthful with Ellie about the nature of death, Louis opts to tell Ellie that the cat simply ran away. Jud accompanies Louis to bury Church in the Pet Sematary but insists they go further, to the blocked-off land beyond it. The next day, Church is back, but he's not the same. He's disheveled, smelly, covered in caked blood, and is violent toward the family. Jud informs Louis that the area beyond the Pet Sematary is a tribal Wendigo burial ground of the native Indians who once inhabited the area, and there's something about the land that brings back the dead.

If you've seen PET SEMATARY, you know what happens next (the ghostly Victor Pascow character, played by Obssa Ahmed, is pretty much an afterthought that the movie seems to forget about), but this new version switches it up quite a bit in ways that the trailer completely spoiled. It's Ellie--not Gage--who gets mowed down by a truck. When a grieving Rachel, whose traumatic memories and suppressed guilt over her spinal meningitis-afflicted older sister Zelda (Alyssa Levine) come back to haunt her in the new house in Ludlow, takes Gage to visit her parents in Boston, Louis is left alone at the house with plenty of time to exhume Ellie's body and bury it beyond the Pet Sematary. And of course, she returns, and she's...different. Earlier on, Lithgow's Jud invokes the signature line "Sometimes dead is better," and sometimes leaving well enough alone is as well. I was with PET SEMATARY '19 to a point, and the idea of Ellie getting killed instead of Gage isn't a dealbreaker, but there needs to be a good reason for it. And the best reason I can surmise is that the idea of a murderous, scalpel-wielding undead toddler is a bridge too far in these more sensitive and easily-triggered times. Young Laurence is fine as the living and dead Ellie, and it's not her fault that Ellie returning from the dead with a droopy eye and having long conversations with her dad comes off as ludicrous when, even when brought to "life" by an animatronic puppet that didn't look quite real in 1989, the undead, killer Gage is far more unsettling than a loquacious near-tween with a "#whatever" sneer.

Poster for the 1989 version

The chain of events that unfold once Ellie returns from the Pet Sematary ultimately takes PET SEMATARY '19 from loose adaptation to straight-up Stephen King fan fiction, so much so that it starts to resemble a modern reimagining of the "Wurdalak" segment from Mario Bava's 1964 classic BLACK SABBATH more than anything else. While Clarke and Seimetz are a step up in thespian ability over Midkiff and Crosby, this version is sorely missing the sense of folksy camaraderie that the great Fred Gwynne brought to the 1989 film. His Jud was just as readers pictured (ayuh), even though both the 1989 and 2019 films dump Jud's wife Norma from the narrative aside from establishing that Jud is a widower (she's in the book, where Louis even saves her from a heart attack at one point). Lithgow brings a certain level of wisdom and gravitas to Jud, but that's due more to his being a seasoned pro who can make something out of nothing, as Jud is just on hand for reams of exposition and nothing else. There's no real friendship with Louis, which was key to both King's book and the 1989 film, and his decision to even bring up burying Church beyond the Pet Sematary seems both unnecessarily sinister and completely boneheaded (and a throwaway line even implies that Jud had something to do with Norma's death). Lithgow is one of our finest actors, but he's just collecting a paycheck here. PET SEMATARY '19 is a film that cuts corners on the assumption that you're already familiar with the material and it's working from a checklist of things it knows test audiences and genre fans enjoy. You got kids in creepy masks, Blumhouse-inspired jump scares, shout-outs to other movies (including the 1989 PET SEMATARY), a shitty new cover of the Ramones' closing credits song "Pet Sematary," and why the hell is Jud invoking the Wendigo other than to pander for cult horror nerd cred and to make Larry Fessenden hard? Again, it's not like PET SEMATARY '89 was an untouchable classic, but while PET SEMATARY '19 offers a precious few improvements, they aren't nearly enough to justify its existence.

On Netflix: GERALD'S GAME (2017)

GERALD'S GAME
(US - 2017)

Directed by Mike Flanagan. Written by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard. Cast: Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Henry Thomas, Chiara Aurelia, Kate Siegel, Carel Struycken. (Unrated, 103 mins)

Based on Stephen King's 1992 novel of the same name, the Netflix Original film GERALD'S GAME comes at a particularly zeitgeisty moment in pop culture: Andy Muschietti's IT, from King's 1986 novel, is a bona fide blockbuster and the biggest horror hit in years, and with its themes of sexual abuse and toxic masculinity, GERALD's GAME is a film practically tailor-made for the era of the woke thinkpiece. It's probably taken this long for Gerald's Game to be made into a movie because it's usually cited as one of King's less filmable works, though director/co-writer Mike Flanagan, one of horror's most promising voices of the last decade (OCULUS, HUSH, OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL, and still-shelved BEFORE I WAKE), gives it his best shot. Gerald's Game was the first novel in what could retroactively be termed King's "woke" phase. It was followed the same year by the acclaimed Dolores Claiborne (made into a movie in 1995) and the middling Rose Madder in 1995 (not yet adapted for the big or small screen, and probably even less filmable than Gerald's Game). GERALD'S GAME works best when it stays focused in the here and now, with its heroine in an increasingly doomed situation. Fatigue sets in and her mind starts playing tricks on her. She begins hallucinating manifestations of long-suppressed traumas of her past that have influenced every decision she's ever made. She summons a degree of inner resolve she never thought possible and King believes in her, and fortunately for Flanagan, he has a game lead actress giving it everything she's got in what should be the role of her career.

GERALD'S GAME is anchored by a gutsy and absolutely fearless performance by Carla Gugino, a jobbing actress who's been a familiar face in movies and TV since the late 1980s, though she first gained notice with her breakout role opposite Pauly Shore in 1993's SON IN LAW. Gugino is Jessie, the beautiful trophy wife of older, wealthy attorney Gerald (Bruce Greenwood). Their marriage has gone stale, and Gerald arranges a weekend getaway at an isolated cabin to reignite the spark. Jessie buys some sexy lingerie, while Gerald packs Viagra and handcuffs. He wastes no time, handcuffing Jessie to the reinforced bedposts and cajoling her to engage in a rape fantasy. Things quickly turn uncomfortable as his play gets a little more rough than Jessie's willing to indulge. She bites his lower lip to get him off of her and in the middle of the ensuing argument, Gerald clutches his arm and his chest, dropping dead of a heart attack right on top of her. She kicks him off the bed and onto the hardwood floor where the fall cracks his head open. There's no one around, Gerald's phone and the keys to the handcuffs are just out of reach, and the design of the bedposts makes it impossible to slide the cuffs off of them to allow freedom. On top of that, Gerald left the front door open in his excitement to get between the sheets, allowing a hungry stray dog inside, who almost immediately helps himself to Gerald's corpse on the bedroom floor. Then the hallucinations start.

Jessie sees herself in the room, giving herself advice and guidance that goes against the vision of Gerald that keeps belittling her and reminding her of her place. The image of Jessie starts bringing up horrific events of her childhood, all centered on an instance of sexual molestation by her father (Henry Thomas in flashbacks) during a solar eclipse while the family was vacationing at a lake when she was 12 (Chiara Aurelia plays Jessie in these scenes). While "Jessie" pushes her to fight, "Gerald" tells her to give in to Death, who will come at night at take her in the form of The Moonlight Man (Carel Struycken), a monstrous specter who collects souvenirs of the dead. When GERALD'S GAME stays in the room, it works, and that's due almost entirely to Gugino's performance. She's ably supported by Greenwood, riffing on his now-standard "Bruce Greenwood" persona (he really is the go-to guy for smug, asshole husbands), but the film falls apart at roughly the same place the book does. Flanagan makes some changes--the book version of Gerald is a unattractive and slovenly, while Greenwood is handsome and impressively buff at 61--but remains faithful to King to a fault. The finale of the novel wasn't a disaster, but on the screen, it doesn't work at all, and not knowing how to end things has been just one problem that's plagued King's inconsistent output since right around the time he wrote Gerald's Game (this was also glaringly apparent with Rose Madder, which starts great but shits the bed and never recovers the moment its battered wife heroine dives into a mirror and enters a fantasy realm, and the issue of whether we're at the point where King's mediocre and forgettable work outnumbers his classics is a valid discussion to have). Flanagan has been a Gerald's Game superfan since he read it as a teenager and has cited it as a dream project that was a main inspiration in his wanting to become a filmmaker. But in the end, his movie adaptation will stand as an example of something not quite translating from page to screen. Stories work differently depending on the medium, and mileage may vary, but the last ten minutes of GERALD'S GAME feel anticlimactic and tacked-on, and the book's ending should've been the first thing to go when Flanagan began outlining the script. Yes, he should be commended for tackling a difficult adaptation and succeeding more often than not (and there's one grisly moment that will make even the most experienced gorehounds grimace and look away), but despite a great performance by Gugino, this aims for the fences but doesn't quite make it.

In Theaters: IT (2017)

IT
(US - 2017)

Directed by Andy Muschietti. Written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman. Cast: Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hamilton, Owen Teague, Jake Sim, Logan Thompson, Jackson Robert Scott, Stephen Bogaert, Stuart Hughes, Steven Williams, Megan Charpentier, Javier Botet. (R, 134 mins)

Stephen King's gargantuan 1986 best seller was already turned into an ABC miniseries in 1990 with middling results, and the long-in-the-works big screen adaptation of half of it takes a more successful if still flawed stab at the material. I remember checking It out of the library when I was 13 and barely sleeping for the next week as I devoured over 200 pages per day, reading well into the night. At 69, King is more prolific than ever, even if his current output doesn't carry the same cache as his glory days--he's probably dusting off second-rate stuff he's had stashed away for 30 years--but in 1986, the Stephen King brand was at its ubiquitous zenith. He was cranking out what seemed like at least two books a year, and every other week, it felt like a new King movie adaptation was hitting theaters. The 1990 miniseries did what it could with some of the more graphic horrors depicted on the page, but it's hard not to think that an epic big-screen version of the novel would've been a better move 25 or 30 years ago. IT 2017 began as a project for Cary Fukunaga, best known for directing the first season of TRUE DETECTIVE. He eventually bailed over disagreements during pre-production, with Gary Dauberman (ANNABELLE) reworking Fukunaga and Chase Palmer's script and MAMA director and Guillermo del Toro protege Andy Muschietti at the helm. MAMA showed Muschietti had sufficient genre chops, and IT doesn't disappoint if you're looking for loud, constant jump scares.

But that's often its stumbling block as well. With a running time of 134 minutes--epic by horror standards--IT plays that post-INSIDIOUS/CONJURING jump scare card time and time and time again. As you might expect, it works the first few times but eventually, you'll know when they're coming and they lose more power with each one. The malevolent evil of the novel, personified by nightmarish clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard, who'll be raking in serious cash on the convention circuit for the rest of his life thanks to this movie), seems more focused on the no-longer-novel concept of scary clowns, which of course got a big boost from King's book in the first place but also from cult movies like KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE and Sid Haig's Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS. Scary clowns have always been a thing, but it's only in the relatively recent era that they've become a pop culture trope. Skarsgard is a flamboyantly terrifying Pennywise when he's allowed to act, but so many of his appearances are so heavily enhanced by CGI and digital trickery that it sometimes minimizes him until he's just part of the scenery, the shaky-cam clown attacks all becoming a bit of a blur.

IT 2017 works best when it's grounded and practical. Muschietti puts forth great effort to make this feel as much like a genuine 1980s horror movie as possible. The period detail of its 1989 setting (updated from the late '50s in King's book) is right: the decor, the cars, the hairstyles, a movie theater showing BATMAN, LETHAL WEAPON 2, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5, but sometimes Muschietti oversells it. There's too many mentions of New Kids on the Block, a rock fight set to Anthrax's "Antisocial" seems too slapsticky, and a DONNIE DARKO-esque Steadicam trip through the junior high school set to The Cult's "Love Removal Machine" in place of Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels" all smack of the kind of lazy referencing that's supposed to be funny simply because it's old and easily-recognized. The ensemble of young actors is extremely well-cast, with MIDNIGHT SPECIAL's Jaeden Lieberher the nominal lead as Bill Denbrough, whose younger brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) was sucked into a sewer drain by It a year earlier. The town of Derry, ME is beset by a string of child disappearances, just the latest in a series of tragedies that befall the town every 27 years. Of course, only the kids--an outcast clique dubbed "The Losers"--figure this out as they're haunted one-by-one by sudden appearances of Pennywise, sometimes as a clown and sometimes as an evil woman or a homeless leper (Javier Botet) on the outskirts of town. And this is when they aren't dealing with psychotic bully Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton, a potential William Zabka of his generation, briefly seen in a similar role in the recent King adaptation THE DARK TOWER), or abusive parents, whether it's hypochondriac Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer) being Munchausen-by-proxy'd by his crazy mother or tomboyish Beverly (Sophia Lillis), whose mother seems to be out of the picture and whose father (Stephen Bogaert) has obviously sexually molested her in the past and possibly the present. It's one of IT 2017's more intriguing elements that the most sympathetic parental figure in the film is police chief Bowers (Stuart Hughes), who knows exactly what kind of monster his son is, intervenes when he's about to shoot a helpless cat, and often turns up as a guardian angel of sorts for The Losers and doesn't hesitate to humiliate his asshole son in front of his stupid buddies. This is one of many notable departures from King's book, where Chief Bowers is depicted as an abusive loathsome racist and anti-Semite largely responsible for turning his son into the person he's becoming.

With the setting and the '80s nostalgia (this really does feel like an evil clown version of THE GOONIES at times), it's hard not to draw comparisons to last year's Netflix hit STRANGER THINGS, especially since both share co-star Finn Wolfhard though IT was already in production when STRANGER THINGS took off. The timing is unfortunate, as the novel It certainly had a hand in influencing the outcast character ensemble of STRANGER THINGS, but it's another example of IT 2017 coming years, if not decades later than it should've. A couple of the young actors--Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon, the only black kid in town, and Wyatt Oleff as Jewish Stanley Uris--get lost in the shuffle with the focus on Bill, Beverly, Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), the overweight bookworm nursing a crush on Beverly, and constantly wisecracking, Coke-bottle specs-wearing nerd Richie (Wolfhard). There's some serious jolts in IT (the slideshow scene is an instant classic) and the '80s atmosphere is very well-handled, but IT leans on easy references a little too aggressively at times, sacrificing its painstaking recreation of 1989 and coming off like 2017's idea of a 1980s movie instead of an actual 1980s movie. Even going well past two hours, it feels a little rushed and with the door obviously being left open for a sequel covering the second half of the book, you can't help but wonder if it would've been smarter to adapt this as a limited series of maybe eight episodes for Netflix, Amazon, or HBO.

In Theaters: THE DARK TOWER (2017)

THE DARK TOWER 
(US - 2017)

Directed by Nikolaj Arcel. Written by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen and Nikolaj Arcel. Cast: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Jackie Earle Haley, Katheryn Winnick, Dennis Haysbert, Abbey Lee, Claudia Kim, Fran Kranz, Nicholas Hamilton, Jose Zuniga, Nicholas Pauling, Eva Kaminsky, Robbie McLean. (PG-13, 94 mins)

After a decade in assorted stages of development and pre-production hell, with both J.J. Abrams and Ron Howard attached to direct at various times, the long-planned adaptation of The Dark Tower, a series of Stephen King novels that began with the publication of a short story in 1978, is finally a thing. And they mostly blew it. A labyrinthine series of books that get larger and more unwieldy and self-indulgent with each new volume, going so far as to include King himself as a character by the time it's all over, the entire saga is nearly 5000 pages long. Something that complex, with its own internal mythology and the large cast of characters, is impossible to streamline and still be effective and probably needs to be a TV series along the lines of GAME OF THRONES to realize its full potential in a visual medium. But in the hands of Danish director and co-writer Nikolaj Arcel (best known for helming 2012's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner A ROYAL AFFAIR and scripting the original film version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO as well as the three DEPARTMENT Q movies), making his Hollywood debut, THE DARK TOWER is a jumbled, confused pastiche of the book series and other King tropes and references (a kid who "shines," someone walking a St. Bernard, a framed photo of the cinematic Overlook Hotel, a portal labelled "1408") that goes off on its own tangent, with the closing credits rolling at just under the 90-minute mark. At times feeling like a really long "Previously on..." recap of a DARK TOWER TV series that doesn't exist, Arcel and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen (MIFUNE, WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF, BROTHERS), who reworked an existing script from Abrams' and Howard's time with the project by, respectively, Jeff Pinkner (LOST, FRINGE) and human focus group response Akiva Goldsman, try to cram in as many recognizable "Dark Tower"-related things as possible to keep the die-hards happy. King adaptations don't need to be faithful to work on their own terms--THE SHINING is proof of that--but the makers of THE DARK TOWER blowtorch through the exposition so quickly, with no context or frame of reference, that the whole thing will come off as either completely incoherent to anyone who hasn't read the books (I stopped after the third) or as pointless Dark Tower fan fiction to those who have. Arcel keeps the pace fast to a fault--almost certainly so you don't have a chance to ask questions until it's over, by which point you'll have forgotten most of it--and he gets a lot of mileage out of a well-cast star, but this thing is a total mess, and what could've been the beginning of an ambitious, epic big-screen franchise (that was the plan under Howard) ends up being 2017's JONAH HEX.

Still dealing with the death of his firefighter father in the line of duty, 12-year-old Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) is haunted by visions in his dreams of another dimension where a huge tower keeps order in the universe. The tower is what stands in the way of the master plan of the nefarious sorcerer The Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), who rules Mid-World, a world of monstrous creatures in human masks who abduct psychic children, the only beings capable of destroying the tower, which is the Man in Black's plan to unleash the ultimate evil. No one believes Jake--not his sympathetic mother (Katheryn Winnick), his asshole stepfather (Nicholas Pauling), or his psychologist (Jose Zuniga)--and a vision of a dilapidated house leads him to a condemned building in Brooklyn, where he discovers a portal to Mid-World. After going through, he encounters Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), the last Gunslinger, sworn to avenge the death of his father (Dennis Haysbert) at the hands of the Man in Black. Armed with pistols forged from Excalibur (yes, that Excalibur), Roland takes Jake under his wing as they're pursued through Mid-World into Manhattan, on what Mid-Worlders call "Keystone Earth," just one of many dimensions that exist in the universe, of which the Dark Tower is the center of all planes of existence.

The script takes ideas from various points in the books and mashes them all into a barely coherent story. The Man in Black is also known as "Walter Padick," but it's not clear when he became the force of evil that he is (it seems like something pretty big has to happen to turn a guy named Walter into the ultimate manifestation of demonic evil), and the movie never even bothers to mention another of his identities in the book: Randall Flagg, the name of the antagonist in both The Stand and The Eyes of the Dragon. The Man in Black (this is not one of McConaughey's better performances) has some kind of sci-fi command center where he makes pithy comments to his underlings, all of whom seem to be completely incompetent, since he's constantly being beamed into Keystone Earth to take care of everything himself (example of how sloppy the finished film is: at one point, he makes a special trip to interrogate someone for information he was already made aware of a couple scenes earlier). The film was rushed through production and after some bad test screenings, underwent some hasty reshoots in an attempt to make sense of everything (three editors are credited), and about half of McConaughey's scenes appear to be from this second round of production, the major tell being that he has spiky bedhead in some scenes and a slicked-back, helmet-like wig in others, the production in such a mad rush to get done that they didn't even carefully monitor J.K.Livin's hair continuity. Other characters drift in and out with little purpose--Abbey Lee (MAD MAX: FURY ROAD) was described as "the female lead" in initial reports when she signed on, but her character is a mostly silent sidekick whose primary function is to stand beside by the Man in Black (or, if you prefer, Walter), and Jake's bullying school nemesis Lucas Hanson (Nicholas Hamilton) is reduced to about 30 seconds of screen time where he swipes Jake's sketch book and we never even get his name. Arcel essentially turns King's saga into a post-HUNGER GAMES/DIVERGENT/MAZE RUNNER YA adaptation, wasting a strong performance by Elba, who's very good in the action sequences and in the fish-out-of-water section when Roland goes through the portal and ends up in Manhattan. He and Taylor are apparently committed to a DARK TOWER TV series planned for 2018, which will hopefully be a more faithful take on King's saga than this misfire, which doesn't seem so much completed as it does abandoned. As far as Arcel is concerned, add him to the always-growing list of European filmmakers with cautionary tales of being seduced by Hollywood studios and a bigger budget than they've ever had only to find the film subjected to compromises, business decisions, and the fickle whims of test audiences, neutering any of the individuality and vision that got them the job in the first place, and sending them back home to regroup and focus on a small-scale, back to basics project.

In Theaters/On VOD: CELL (2016)

CELL
(US - 2016)

Directed by Tod Williams. Written by Stephen King and Adam Alleca. Cast: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Stacy Keach, Owen Teague, Erin Elizabeth Burns, Clark Sarullo, Ethan Stuart Casto, Joshua Mikel, Catherine Dyer, Lloyd Kaufman. (R, 98 mins)

Based on the 2006 Stephen King novel, CELL is easily the worst big-screen King adaptation since 1995's THE MANGLER, which may come as a surprise since King himself co-wrote the script. The novel had a bumpy journey from page to screen, first being announced in 2007 by the Weinsteins and Dimension Films as a project for Eli Roth, from a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Roth left over "creative differences" and the entire project fell apart. The Weinsteins sold the rights to others, Alexander and Karaszewski's script was tossed, and King himself was commissioned to rewrite the screenplay. By the time filming began, with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 director Tod Williams at the helm, significant rewrites were done by Adam Alleca, who scripted the 2009 remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. That remake was OK as far as remakes go, but it begs a question: how bad was King's script that Adam Alleca was hired to fix it? CELL reunites John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, stars of the not-bad 2008 King short story adaptation 1408, but both actors have rarely seemed more disinterested in what they're doing. It's a badly-made, incoherent mess, starting with video-burned opening credits that make it look like a cheap TV show, and ending with some embarrassing CGI explosions that aren't even up to the standards of The Asylum. Remember when Stephen King movies were big events? It's not long into CELL before you realize why Lionsgate gave it a stealth VOD burial. It's an amateurish disaster that would be laughed off the screens if it got a wide multiplex release. This is so bad that even a prime time slot on Syfy on a Saturday night would've been too gala a premiere for it.

An exclusive pic of an audience exiting
a pre-release test screening of CELL

Whatever themes that were present in King's novel--there's some satirical points to be made by the effects of cell and smartphones on the public--are dumped here in favor of yet another generic zombie apocalypse story. Opening with an event known as "The Pulse," much of the world (or at least the few Atlanta locations the boatload of producers could afford) is turned into rampaging, flesh-eating 28 DAYS LATER creatures by a croaky signal that transmits over their phones. Fortunately for comic book artist Clay Riddell (Cusack), his cell battery died at the airport just before The Pulse, thus making him immune from the initial outbreak. Teaming up with subway conductor Tom McCourt (Jackson), the pair venture to Clay's studio where his neighbor Alice (ORPHAN's Isabelle Fuhrman) has just been forced to kill her zombified mother. The trio make their way across what's become a post-apocalyptic hellscape seemingly in a matter of hours, eventually picking up another survivor, Jordan (Owen Teague), and heading to Clay's house to find his estranged wife and son. They soon realize that the source of the cellular mayhem is a character drawn years ago by Clay: a spectre in a red hoodie known in the book as Raggedy but rechristened The Night Traveler for the movie (played by Joshua Mikel), a figure they've all seen in their dreams, who's somehow controlling the hive-minded horde of cell phone zombies.

Cell wasn't one of King's better novels, coming off much of the time like a technologically-tweaked revamp of The Stand with tired tropes taken from any number of older King books (does anyone rip himself off more than Stephen King?). CELL can't even manage to get to the level of an entertaining ripoff. It might've been effective ten years ago, but the overrated 2008 indie THE SIGNAL already covered a lot of this. There's a ton of deviations from the novel, none of them improvements. Most notable is the fate of Charles Ardai, the headmaster of a prep school where the trio first finds Jordan. In the book, Ardai is a major character overtaken by a "Phoner" signal that convinces him to commit suicide. In the film, Ardai, played by Stacy Keach in a five-minute cameo, simply gets impaled after an explosion and the group moves on. There's absolutely no sense of time or place in CELL. It looks like Clay, Tom, and Alice hit the road immediately after The Pulse, but the country is already a desolate wasteland and survival camps have sprung up. It's like an entire season of THE WALKING DEAD haphazardly whittled down to 98 minutes, and much of it shot in such total darkness that it's impossible to tell what's going on. Exposition is mechanically dropped by actors playing characters who sound like they're spouting facts they just yanked out of their asses, just as an easy way to get to the next set piece. This has all the hallmarks of a botched disaster--two years on the shelf; King nowhere in sight to promote a movie he co-wrote; a shrugging Cusack looking pale, disheveled, and bored, displaying almost no reaction to the carnage happening around him; Jackson seeming thoroughly pissed-off that he was talked into being in it; a dated appearance by the long-ago-viral "Trololo Song" as a plot point (it sedates the Phoners)--coming off very much like an unreleasable dumpster fire that was just abandoned by everyone involved. It's 98 minutes of nobody giving a shit. Even by the standards of much of Cusack's recent work in the Cusackalypse Now canon (his stellar turn in the terrific LOVE & MERCY aside), the shit-the-bed CELL is the worst film of his career.

In Theaters: CARRIE (2013)

CARRIE
(US - 2013)

Directed by Kimberly Peirce.  Written by Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.  Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Judy Greer, Portia Doubleday, Gabriella Wilde, Alex Russell, Ansel Elgort, Barry Shabaka Henley, Hart Bochner, Zoe Belkin, Samantha Weinstein. (R, 98 mins)

(SPOILERS DISCUSSED THROUGHOUT)

The latest Hollywood horror remake is as unnecessary as you'd expect, despite the involvement of BOYS DON'T CRY and STOP-LOSS director Kimberly Peirce, helming just her third film in 14 years.  Considering how little she brings to the table here, one must be forced to assume that she simply needed the money.  This "re-imagining" of the 1974 Stephen King novel and 1976 Brian De Palma film (there was also a 2002 made-for-TV remake, and the less said about 1999's THE RAGE: CARRIE 2, the better) is about as perfunctory and go-through-the-motions as it gets, remaining watchable and never dull but also never justifying its existence.  It utilizes enough of the 1976 film that its screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen shares a presumably WGA-mandated credit with playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who must share the blame with Peirce for its complete collapse in the home stretch.

The now-familiar story of bullied, telekinetic Carrie White (played here by Chloe Grace Moretz), her religious-fanatic mother Margaret (Julianne Moore), and a prom prank that goes horribly awry was turned into such an iconic classic by De Palma that Peirce seems to throw in the towel from the start.  CARRIE '13 seems to be sprinting past the details, glossing over dramatic and character developments as if to say "Well, you've seen the original enough times, so you know what happens here."  It's almost like it's Cliffs Notes-ing its way through the proceedings.  As a result, there's no tension.  There's no suspense.  When bitchy Chris Hargenson (Portia Doubleday) and dirtbag boyfriend Billy Nolan (Alex Russell) dump the bucket of pig's blood on Carrie at the prom, De Palma's depiction was a stylish, elaborately-choreographed masterwork of stomach-knotting anticipation and dread.  Here...it just gets dumped.  It's a lose-lose for Peirce:  she can't mimic De Palma's split diopters and split-screens without getting shit for it, and his work was so good that it can't be topped, so she's forced to just dump it in the blandest way possible.  She tries to gussy it up by replaying it three times but it serves no purpose.  There's not even the "They're all gonna laugh at you!" refrain. This problem occurs time and again throughout CARRIE '13.  Everything effective under De Palma is neutered or outright absent here.  But could it have turned out any other way?

Peirce and Aguirre-Sacasa do include a few elements from King's novel that didn't make it into De Palma's version:  there's a brief shot of a court inquiry where Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) is being questioned, Chris' big-shot lawyer dad (Hart Bochner sighting!) unsuccessfully tries to throw his weight around with the principal (Barry Shabaka Henley) after his daughter is suspended from school, and gym teacher Miss Desjardin (Judy Greer) gets her original name back and survives Carrie's prom rampage (Betty Buckley played her as "Miss Collins" and got killed), but they also make the curious decision to tone down the character of Margaret.  This could be because Piper Laurie played it just crazy enough without going over-the-top that Moore saw no way to improve on it from that angle.  Moore is fine in the role, but Margaret is really less of a menace here than she is in the 1976 film and in the book.  In King and De Palma, Margaret fears her daughter but also despises her and her burgeoning womanhood, "the blood," and "the boys who come sniffing like dogs, grinning and slobbering to find out where that smell is."  Laurie's interpretation of the character was intimidating and terrifying, where Moore plays Margaret as more overprotective and demonstrates far more affection than she shows in the book or in Laurie's Oscar-nominated performance.

There's no problems with Moretz in terms of her performance, but at the risk of simplifying things, she's too attractive to play Carrie, and slouching her shoulders, hiding behind her hair, and wearing frumpy garments isn't going to disguise that.  She's a terrific young actress, but she's just not right for this role.  Even Sissy Spacek--also Oscar-nominated--didn't fit King's description of a "chunky" Carrie, and while De Palma didn't cast someone overweight in the role, she was one of those actresses who thrived in the 1970s when unconventional looks were acceptable.  Spacek is not someone who's conventionally "hot" by a standard textbook Hollywood definition, either in the 1970s or now.  She has an unconventional beauty to her but she also had a plain, "odd" quality that was well-utilized by De Palma and other directors like Terrence Malick in 1973's BADLANDS and Robert Altman in 1977's 3 WOMEN (even MAY star and horror/cult figure Angela Bettis, in the 2002 version, has an unusual look to her to that made her a believable Carrie).  Moretz looks gorgeous even when she's trying not to be.  By the time we get to the prom rampage, Moretz's Carrie starts behaving like someone who's seen CARRIE.  Instead of slowly walking through the gym and wreaking her vengeance, Moretz has been directed to wildly contort and symphonically gesticulate with wild-eyed abandon, looking more like a villain in the climax of an X-MEN movie than Carrie.

It's the prom where the film really starts to fall apart, despite newcomer Elgort's surprisingly sensitive interpretation of Tommy Ross, though he may not have William Katt's legendary locks (perhaps one improvement this film makes is ensuring the audience knows Tommy has been killed by the bucket hitting his head; Tommy's fate always seemed vague in De Palma's film until it's mentioned in passing near the end).  In the book, nearly everyone was killed, and De Palma even killed off the sympathetic gym teacher after Carrie imagined her laughing at her.  Here, Carrie kills a few people and most seem to escape.  But Peirce and Aguirre-Sacasa save the worst for last, as they inexplicably have Sue show up at the White home after Carrie kills her mother.  They have a conversation and Carrie sees Sue wasn't involved in the prank, and tells her "You're going to have a girl."  Yes, Sue is now pregnant with Tommy's child (hinted at but never overtly stated by King, as Sue either gets her period or miscarries near the end of the novel) and Carrie has somehow developed psychic abilities.  Does this have anything to do with Carrie's ability to move things?  If so, then why wasn't she able to see the prank that was about to happen? 

CARRIE '13 is competently-made and there's nothing wrong with the actors.  The biggest issue is the same as with most other horror remakes:  it just doesn't need to exist.  With one exception (Tommy's death scene), it doesn't improve on anything, it isn't better-directed, the ending can't be anything but lame compared to De Palma's, the CGI visual effects are less convincing than the practical ones from 37 years ago, and the usually reliable Marco Beltrami offers a snoozer of a score in place of the unforgettable Pino Donaggio cues in the 1976 version. All it really adds are newer fashions, cell phones, Chris posting a video of the shower incident on YouTube, and one already-dated mention of Tim Tebow.  De Palma's film is one that's been talked about and revered for nearly 40 years.  Will anyone remember this remake 40 days from now?