Review: Carrie (2013)

Hello, cinema lovers. Carrie has no openly gay characters, but the lead character's trauma still feels familiar. A bruised, brutal remake that understands the closet better than plenty of films that name it.

The movie opens with a prequel: a scream in a shabby house. Margaret White (Julianne Moore) gives birth painfully alone, then moves to kill her baby. She stops. She hugs her instead.

Fast-forward several years: a teenage Carrie (Chloë Grace Moretz) gets her first period in the school showers. She screams. She's in pain, and she needs help. The other girls laugh, throw things, scream and laugh and film her while she's vulnerable.

Chris (Portia Doubleday) is the cruel ringleader and totally revels in her cruelty. Sue (Gabriella Wilde), one of the girls from the showers, regrets her part in the torment and convinces her boyfriend, Tommy (Ansel Elgort), to take Carrie to prom. Judy Greer plays Rita, the teacher who tries to help Carrie and is one of the few people in her life to show her kindness. Then comes the carnage and lots of pig blood.

Moretz plays a girl taught that her body is a sin. Her every gesture apologises for her very existence. Watch her shoulders constantly slumped; watch her eyes nervously looking around and her body in a constant state of high alert. A really great performance worth seeing. Watch, then, as she lifts her shoulders, makes her own dress, restyles her hair, and decides that she is allowed to go to the prom and be happy.

The movie's main arc, from hiding in plain sight to wanting to be seen and validated, is a coming out in everything but name. Moore is frightening because her character is so sad and tragic. Margaret both hits and loves her daughter in the same breath. There is camp value in Moore’s speeches and religious fury, but she never tips into simple parody. Her performance is laser-focused on showing how abuse and cruelty can warp a lonely person's soul, and she almost steals the movie.