Sue is shown to have a bigger belly during an extremely brief courtroom scene – a nod to the court transcript elements of Stephen King’s novel – and the movie ends with her walking past Carrie’s grave, which has been vandalized with the familiar message “Carrie White Burns in Hell.” In the theatrical cut of Carrie, it’s first teased that Sue is pregnant when she vomits in a high school bathroom (remember: the only reason women vomit in movies is because of morning sickness) and Carrie tells Sue about the baby shortly before the tortured telekinetic kills herself. One of the odder choices that the movie makes is the decision to include a reveal that Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) is pregnant – but in fairness to the movie, most of the oddness is clarified if you know about the film’s alternate ending. She is employed as a seamstress at a dry cleaners, and while this job seemingly requires little interaction with the public on a normal day, there is a scene included where she has an encounter with Sue Snell’s mother (Cynthia Preston), and she is depicted as being unhinged to the point where she impulsively and quietly stabs herself in the thigh with a seam ripper during the conversation. In addition to Margaret being front and center in the movie’s prologue, this is the first version of Carrie to show the character at work. Original elements in the film are few and far between – but they do exist. The only attempt to modernize the story is by having Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday) upload a video of Carrie’s shower meltdown to YouTube and play it during the school dance. Many of the deviations from the source material in Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie are ones that were previously utilized in adapting the Stephen King book, with notable examples including the death of Margaret White (who becomes a kitchen utensil pin cushion, just like in Brian De Palma’s movie) and the prom queen (Chloe Moretz) being buried with her mother as the White home is destroyed in a supernatural rock storm. (Image credit: MGM) How Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie Differs From The Book Funny enough (or unsurprisingly, depending on how you look at the situation), per the bonus features on the Blu-ray, this scene wasn’t actually included in the film until the reshoots during post-production. It’s different from the book in that it doesn’t feature any police intervention as a result of noise complaints from neighbors, but it does carry over the idea that Margaret believes she is dying from “a cancer of the womanly parts” instead of being in labor. There is really only one scene in the 2013 movie that isn’t depicted in either of the previous adaptations of Carrie, and it happens to be the opening sequence featuring the psychotic Margaret White (Julianne Moore) giving birth to her daughter. It doesn’t so much further engage with King’s work as it does try to recreate the magic and iconography of the first time the material was brought to the big screen… and what’s the point of that? The key problem with Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie is that it’s not a remake of Stephen King’s book it’s a remake of Brian De Palma’s movie – and that’s a key distinction. ![]() ![]() For better or for worse, it makes its own big choices about the direction of the story (most notably by having the protagonist survive at the end), and it’s arguably an even more faithful take on the epistolary novel than the 1976 film in that it constructs a non-linear storyline and includes notable scenes from the book like Carrie destroying her whole hometown while going home from her nightmarish prom, and killing her mother by telekinetically squeezing her heart until it stops. ![]() The aforementioned 2002 adaptation of Carrie isn’t a very good TV movie/pilot, but it is a project with demonstrated raison d’etre. ![]() When it comes to adaptations, remakes provide the opportunity for previously unused details from the source material to be utilized – but on a more general level, different filmmakers interpret stories different ways, and it can be fascinating to see how plots and characters can evolve with an alternate perspective. There is nothing inherently wrong with the development of a remake. (Image credit: MGM) How Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie Differs From The Previous Carrie Adaptations
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