CARRIE

(Author's note: Spoilers will abound. Given that the movie under consideration is an oftentimes word-for-word updating of a 37-year-old work, I hope I'll be forgiven for them.)

As remakes of beloved genre classics go, I suppose there's little point in being bothered by the new Carrie. Director Kimberly Peirce's outing, after all, is easy to sit through, smartly staged, generally well-acted, and, in most regards, incredibly faithful to Brian De Palma's 1976 original (which was, itself, reasonably faithful to Stephen King's debut novel of 1974). The CGI effects are pretty weak, and the movie isn't even slightly scary, and considering that nearly all sentient beings know what happens to poor Carrie White at the prom - with the movie's entire advertising campaign based on post-prom imagery - there's almost nothing in the way of storyline surprise, but whatever. It's fine.