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Carrie | 2013 | R | - 6.7.5
Remake of the 1976 film: Bullied by her peers and her zealously religious mother (Julianne Moore), Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz) takes violent revenge on everyone at her high school prom by using her telekinetic powers. Also with Judy Greer, Alex Russell, Portia Doubleday, Gabriella Wilde and Ansel Elgort. Directed by Kimberly Peirce. [1:40]
SEX/NUDITY 6 - A teen boy and a teen girl have intercourse in the back of his pickup truck: we see him on top, thrusting, with a plaid blanket over his buttocks (we see the lower legs of both, his bare back and chest and the bare shoulders and arms of both) and they both gasp as they climax.
► Two teen girls wearing revealing short shorts ride to a teen boy's house and sit on his bed; he asks them to have sex so that he can watch, they laugh and he kisses one girl briefly.
► A woman screams in an upstairs room and we follow an empty stairway to see a Bible covered in blood, a broken coffee cup and other debris; in a bedroom, we see the woman wearing a long nightgown (lower legs exposed) with lots of blood between her legs and all over the white sheets on the bed as she calls out that she is dying and asks God for help; trembling, she pulls up her nightgown where we see a bloody baby's head and she picks up the newborn and rocks it.
► A teen girl showers in the high school locker area (we see her bare shoulders and arms); she drops a bar of soap when she sees it is slightly bloody and her hands are covered with blood and she screams for help, not knowing what menstruation is (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details) while other girls throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her, chanting, "Plug it up!"
► Dozens of high school girls wear short-shorts to classes, revealing bare legs to the upper thigh. Teenage girls wear tight-fitting knit leggings that accentuate the curves of their buttocks, hips and legs. On sport fields, teen girls wear tight-fitting, almost legless shorts (revealing legs to the upper thigh) and crop tops that reveal shoulders, arms and abdomens. Boys on sports teams wear knee-length shorts and sleeveless shirts that reveal lower legs and bare arms and shoulders. At a high school prom, teen girls wear slightly low-cut gowns that reveal some cleavage. In a prom scene, we see the partially bare thighs of a few teen girls wearing short dresses. A female teacher exposes moderate cleavage in her dress. A dozen girls in a high school locker room wear large towels wrapped around them, revealing bare lower legs, shoulders and arms. Teen girls wear one-piece swimsuits for pool volleyball that reveal bare shoulder/arms and legs and a few show cleavage as well. A locker room scene features girls wearing bras and panties, short shorts or micro-miniskirts that reveal bare legs to the thigh and some cleavage.
► A teen girl confronts another teen girl about a prom and says, "You already booked a hotel room; have you practiced the noises you're gonna make?" as the other girl walks away. A woman tells her 18-year-old daughter that intercourse was the Original Sin of Adam and Eve and that men and teen boys are always after blood -- the bloody sin of intercourse; she says she should have killed herself when she discovered herself pregnant. A mother tells her teen daughter that she has "dirty pillows" and she responds saying that they are breasts.
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VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - A teen girl and a teen boy walk onto a stage while a man and a teen girl in the rafters above the stage struggle, argue and release a bucket of semi-congealed pig's blood onto the girl, splashing the boy, who shouts, "What the [mild obscenity deleted]?" and we see the blood pour down four times, from different angles; the metal bucket loosens and hits the boy on the head, killing him (we see him lying motionless with his eyes open); the girl is terrified, then becomes angry while crying over the boy and makes the stage decorations and props crash down and catch fire; she uses powers to hurl teen boys and teen girls into walls while shattering windows and hurling teachers into the wings of the stage and we see teens screaming and running to the doors, which lock themselves; two teen girls are knocked to the floor by invisible forces and trampled by shoes in close-up including sharp high heels (they appear dead, face down, with their eyes open and with blood surrounding them); a teen girl is engulfed by flames, screaming histrionically and she seems to disintegrate in the fire while the teen using her powers hurls more teen boys and teen girls out of the building, then makes loose electric cables snap people as if the cables are whips, and sparks fly from a shallow pool of water on the floor; she slams a tall set of bleachers closed and boys and girls fall off them, but one boy is caught and smashed at the waist and he screams in pain as the bleachers continue to close on him and the camera cuts away.
► A teen girl follows a teen boy and a teen girl and pursues their car on foot; we see two buildings go up in tall flames as a police cruiser rushes past with flashing lights and siren blaring while teen boys and teen girls are stumbling around on the sidewalk, moaning and crying; the walking girl uses telekinesis as she stomps the road pavement, creates a split and a hole to engulf the car she is chasing, the car turns and the girl inside shouts to kill the girl on the pavement so the male driver speeds toward her, but crashes against a force field, hitting the windshield and dying with a bloody face; the girl in the car tries to start it and drive, revving the engine as the girl with telekinetic powers levitates the car and sends it crashing into a gas station and against a gas pump; we see the driving girl's face hit the windshield and break through, with glass shards flying and her face becomes lodged at the ears in the opening (her face is covered with deep, bleeding wounds and dripping blood); the girl with the telekinetic powers causes an electric spark from a streetlight to ignite the spilled gas around the pump and a giant explosion and tall flames engulf the car and gas station as she walks away.
► A teen girl covered with pig's blood enters her house, washes off the blood and dons a long nightgown when her mother embraces her and stabs her in the shoulder blade with large scissors, drawing blood and a shout of pain; the girl breaks free, while the mother chases her with a carving knife, cutting one of the girl's legs (we see blood flow); the woman is levitated to keep her from killing the girl just as she jabs scissors at her and stops short of an eye; the girl levitates many pairs of scissors, knives and skewers around the woman and stabs her, pinning her to a door in a crucifix position with blood dripping from hand and chest stab wounds; the woman seems to die, then revives with a gasp and the girl takes her down from the wall, pulling out bloody weapons as the woman gasps and dies on the floor.
► A teen girl levitates another teen girl out of her house as the house begins to fall apart as if in an earthquake; it explodes in smoke and flames and crashes to become rocks and debris, and then sinks into the earth (the girl is presumed dead).
► A woman alone at home delivers a baby (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details) and chants, "Cut it out, cut it out" while stabbing at the baby's eye with large dressmaker's shears, but stops short of stabbing the infant.
► A woman bangs her head repeatedly against a wall to punish herself for having a child out of wedlock; in another scene, she scratches her arms repeatedly until they bleed and later bangs her head against a closet door from the inside and reaches through a crack in the door to break it open, bloodying her fingers; at work in a dry cleaning store, she talks with a customer while below the counter she uses a seam ripper to dig into her thigh under her dress in close-up, until the leg bleeds.
► After a teen girl starts her first period in the school shower (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details), she screams, accidentally rubs blood on other girls, and they throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her; the female gym teacher slaps the crying girl in the face to stop her shouting (no mark is shown) and we later see a bloody handprint on the teacher's shorts; a teen girl films the crying girl and posts the video on the Internet.
► A mother grabs her teenage daughter, slams her and locks her into a dim prayer closet that is decorated with black ink drawings, dark paintings of Christ suffering on the cross and a dark wooden crucifix that bleeds and drips blood as the girl screams and the door cracks down its center, lengthwise. A mother physically grabs her teen daughter because the girl came home after dark, after purchasing material for a dress and the girl levitates the woman away every time she approaches and drops her onto the floor until the woman gives up the fight. A woman tries to assault her teen daughter, who uses telekinesis to seal the woman's mouth and levitate her into a prayer closet; the woman bangs her head on a wall inside as she shouts and the girl melts the door bolt on the outside by melting and fusing it, and then leaves the house.
► A man, three teen boys and a teen girl enter a pigpen at night where one boy takes a sledgehammer, tells a pig he will bash its head in, and then says he cannot do it; the man kisses the hammer head, quickly smashes it down off-screen and we hear a pig squeal briefly; the man gives the girl a knife and she slits the animal's throat on screen (we see blood gush out and onto her and the man).
► A teen girl levitates a young boy onto his back across the yard for calling her "Crazy Carrie," she breaks the water cooler in her principal's office without touching it and she practices levitating a dozen books, her bed and knick-knacks in her bedroom until her mother appears holding a carving knife to investigate, but the girl pretends to be asleep. A teen girl makes a carving knife slide from a tabletop and stab the floor, scaring her mother. A teen girl looks at a mirror, and it breaks by itself and falls into the sink, where the girl levitates a few shards. A teen girl makes the American flag outside her classroom in the yard fly more strongly.
► A man and a teen girl take a cooler of pig's blood to a school room at night and hang a bucket of the blood from pulleys in the rafters as they argue and he tells her that he will kill her if she reports what they are doing, because it is criminal assault; he later threatens to kill the teen girl when she laughs at the bucket getting stuck.
► A teen girl curses at a gym teacher for issuing running exercises and is suspended from school and the high school prom; the suspended girl argues the next day with the principal, the gym teacher and her father in the school office and says the punishment is child abuse; she then walks into the gym where she verbally attacks her friends with shouts and curses, and then leaves.
► A woman and her teen daughter argue constantly about the meaning of Christian scriptures, with the mother interpreting them all as a call for corporal punishment and suffering to cleanse away what she deems as sins. Graffiti across lockers in high school reads, "Carrie White eats [scatological term deleted]." A teen girl discovers that telekinesis runs in her family and her mother calls her a witch.
► A teen girl runs into the high school bathroom and into a stall, where we hear her wretch and flush the toilet.
► A teacher stands outside a school building and we see a large sling on her arm and she cries briefly. A girl seated at a party table receives a reddened paper cut in close-up across her palm, but says it does not hurt.
► In a cemetery, a white gravestone is painted in red: "Carrie White burns in Hell," and the stone cracks and breaks apart as the scene ends. At a court hearing, a teen girl says that her boyfriend and all her friends died on prom night and she adds that a girl had special powers and was pushed too far by others bullying her, broke mentally and caused the multiple deaths and destruction of that night.
LANGUAGE 5 - About 5 F-words and its derivatives, 1 sexual hand gesture, 16 scatological terms, 6 anatomical terms, 5 mild obscenities, exclamations (shut-up), name-calling (witch, nuts, pig, freak, weird, crazy, idiotic, cancer, devil's hand, fool), stereotypical references to teenagers, Catholics, bullies, child abusers, teachers, people who are different, people with mental illnesses, 4 religious profanities (GD), 13 religious exclamations (e.g. Help Me Lord, To The Devil, Oh My God, Oh God, Jesus, God).
SUBSTANCE USE - Two teen girls drink from beer bottles inside an SUV as a boy drives them to his house and one girl continues to drink on the sidewalk, a teen boy on Prom Night tells a teacher and his date that he heard that the punch is spiked (we see no one drinking anything).
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Bullying, child abuse, anger, corporal punishment, self-mutilation, revenge, Christianity, severe mental disorders, teen pregnancy, family, friendship, forgiveness.
MESSAGE - Bullying and child abuse can result in death.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
Moana 2 - 1.3.1
Gladiator II - 2.7.2
Wicked: Part I - 3.4.2
Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. - 1.5.3
Emilia Pérez - 6.6.7
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We are a totally independent website with no connections to political, religious or other groups & we neither solicit nor choose advertisers. You can help us keep our independence with a donation.
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Become a member of our premium site for just $2/month & access advance reviews, without any ads, not a single one, ever. And you will be helping support our website & our efforts.
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We welcome suggestions & criticisms -- and we will accept compliments too. While we read all emails & try to reply we do not always manage to do so; be assured that we will not share your e-mail address.