BEFORE: There have been a few articles written recently about the too-common practice of having actors in their late twenties, or even early thirties, being cast as high-school students - exceptions can be made, of course, for films like "Never Been Kissed", where there's an older character actually pretending to be a high-school student, but for the most part, casting directors seem to think that the audience can't tell the difference between a teenage actor and an older one. Right now the focus is on 28-year-old Ben Platt trying to pass in "Dear Evan Hansen", and apparently failing.
Tonight's film is probably guilty of this practice, across the board. Lead actress Emily Bergl was 24 when the film was released in 1999, Jason London and co-star Dylan Bruno were 27, and Mena Suvari was 20. At least one actor, Zachery Ty Bryan, was age appropriate at 18. But if you go back to the original "Carrie" film, which was released in 1976, star Sissy Spacek was 27 at the time, John Travolta was 22, Amy Irving was 23, Nancy Allen was 26 and William Katt was 25. I guess age ain't nothing but a number, but come on, at some point didn't these actors feel a little bit ridiculous playing high-school kids?
Work is where you find it, I suppose, and high-school's just a perfect setting for a horror movie - even before you add any monsters, demons, aliens or supernatural powers. Aren't the horrors of gym class scary enough by themselves? (I guess for some people it would be the exams or the school lunches, but for me it was gym class.)
Robert D. Raiford carries over from "The Handmaid's Tale"
THE PLOT: A horrible massacre strikes up after an outcast teenage girl is taunted by a group of high school jocks, all of them unaware of her cutthroat telekinetic powers.
AFTER: I suppose this last week of filming hasn't been very kind to teenagers and young women, first they were stalked in the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" franchise, and then they were turned into unwilling surrogate babymakers for infertile couples in "The Handmaid's Tale", and now in this one, Rachel and the other teens in her school are dated and dumped by the football jocks, who are playing some kind of seduction game with all the girls in school, assigning point values to each conquest. Rachel is unaware of the contest and develops real feelings for Jesse, especially after he helps take her dog to the vet following an accident, but later on when she realizes that she's just a pawn in this ratings-system game, she gets very angry - which would only be a problem if she had weird telekinetic powers like that "Carrie" girl did at the same school, 20 years ago.
It's a little funky here that the film is subtitled "Carrie 2", when there's nobody named Carrie in the story, and this leads me to think that there was much debate over whether this should be a remake of the classic 1976 horror film based on a Stephen King story, or an indirect sequel. The story ended up being so similar, though, that it's essentially BOTH, a sequel AND a remake, or maybe a reboot. Probably there was one studio executive in the meeting who ended up in a fetal position on the floor, rocking back and forth while muttering that marketing's going to be a bitch because the character mentioned in the title doesn't even appear in the movie. Jesus, why not just do a re-make, if it's going to follow the same exact plot points, because as it is, focusing on Rachel when this is clearly just Carrie's story repeating itself.
They did get Amy Irving back from the original film, her character somehow survived prom night, and yep, she's got the same name, Sue Snell, and she's older and she now works as a counselor at the high school in the same town. Very convenient, because of course she remembers what went down with Carrie White back in her high-school days, and when Rachel starts displaying the same powers, there's a half-baked theory that maybe they're half-sisters or something, but it never really gets proven or disproven. Sue thinks maybe they had the same father - but 23 years apart? I suppose it's possible. Sue's theory is that the telekinesis is passed down through the father's genes, but what does she base this on? How many psychotic telekinetic girls are there to form this theory around?
This is just one of many questionable choices made during this film - another one is having the character played by the biggest name actress at the time commit suicide early on. Between "American Pie" and "American Beauty", Mena Suvari was putting asses in theater seats back then, so by all means, let's write her character out within the first 10 minutes of the movie, that's a great plan. No worries, we've got Emily Bergl to hold everyone's attention...
But this suicide causes a lot of trouble at school - the football player who was playing "Date & Dump" with her was 18 and she was only 16, and that's a statutory no-no. So that football player suddenly has to deny sleeping with her, and get back the photos they took together on their date. (This was back when photos had to be taken to a drug-store or photo-center to be developed, and you had to wait like three days to get them back, you couldn't just take a photo with your phone and see it instantly. I know.) And who works at the Photo Hut? Why, Rachel, of course.
So at first I think Jesse had to try to date Rachel just to get these photos - but then there's also this points-system dating game that everyone's playing, and then he helps her with her dog and maybe develops real feelings for her. This is what's known as a "convergence", or perhaps "plot point overkill", the screenwriter is determined to get these two together, no matter what, so he creates multiple paths to get there. Later on, Rachel doesn't know which end is up, whether Jesse has genuine emotional depth, or if they're together for one of the other reasons. Umm, girl, he's a football jock, so probably he's as shallow as a puddle. Somehow this is the opposite of a writer painting himself into a corner, instead he's metaphorically splashing a bucket of paint around the whole room just to make sure that doesn't happen.
It's a football town where football rules, so there's no chance of those rape charges sticking, and after that, the football team is basically allowed to do whatever they want to whomever they want, who cares as long as they win the state championship, right? Because Amurica. So sure, why not reveal the sex game to the girls at the big blowout party, because the recruiters saw the game, everybody's getting a scholarship and what's a helpless girl going to do about it? It's not like she's got some crazy telekinetic power that can help her get revenge on the men who tortured her, right? Oh, wait...
A few years later, in 2013, somebody else did a remake of the original, and I have that one, too, only it doesn't link to anything else this year. But I got both this one and that one on DVD about a year ago, and I'm honestly in no hurry to watch the remake - I think I can work it in next year, though, if my plans pan out. Like this one, it's probably just the same old story being told again, only slightly differently.
Also starring Emily Bergl (last seen in "Blue Jasmine"), Jason London (last seen in "Dazed and Confused"), Dylan Bruno (last seen in "Taken 3"), J. Smith-Cameron (last seen in "You Can Count on Me"), Amy Irving (last seen in "Adam"), Zachery Ty Bryan, John Doe (last seen in "Wyatt Earp"), Charlotte Ayanna (last seen in "Training Day"), Rachel Blanchard (last seen in "Snakes on a Plane"), Justin Urich, Mena Suvari (last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), Elijah Craig, Eddie Kaye Thomas (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden"), Clint Jordan, Kate Skinner, Gordon Clapp (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Steven Ford (last seen in "Black Hawk Down"), Rus Blackwell, Harold Surratt, David Lenthall (last seen in "Love Liza"), Deborah Meschan, Katt Shea, Rhoda Griffis (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Kayla Campbell, with archive footage of Sissy Spacek (last seen in "Hot Rod"), William Katt (last seen in "The Other Side of the Wind") and the voice of Piper Laurie (last seen in "White Boy Rick").
RATING: 4 out of 10 shaved heads
No comments:
Post a Comment