Getting Carried away

Carrie (MGM/Screen Gems): Why do filmmakers insist on remaking good movies when there are so many more bad movies worthy of their attention? Brian De Palma's 1976 version remains a classic to this day. The first of Stephen King's novels to be adapted to the big screen, it earned Oscar nominations for actresses Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie.

The 2013 remake of Carrie probably won't share the same fate. Not the lesbian feminist version hoped for from out filmmaker Kimberly Peirce, it's also not the borderline pervy exercise that DePalma's was (no bared breasts here). Peirce's interpretation, with a script by gay playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, honors the original in a variety of ways, something which speaks to both King's novel and Lawrence D. Cohen's `76 screenplay. It also expands on it in some ways. Margaret White (Julianne Moore), the fanatically religious mother of telekinetic and tortured teen Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz), wasn't even aware she was pregnant until the day baby Carrie was born (she thought she had a cancerous tumor), a scene which opens the movie.

Carrie also stands up for herself a little more in the remake. Her exploration and embrace of her telekinetic powers are expanded on as well. This is where the remake takes good advantage of its modern day setting. The internet becomes a valuable resource in Carrie's research of her "magic powers." The internet also becomes a weapon used against the put-upon teen when the classic "first period in the shower" scene is captured on a smartphone video and later uploaded on YouTube.

Peirce's version of Carrie also makes use of current and updated special effect techniques. The crucifixion scene near the end of the original was certainly groundbreaking and isn't tampered with too much. But the pinnacle prom scene, following the fixed crowning of Carrie and class stud Tommy (Ansel Elgort) as King and Queen, ups the violence and volume – a lot. When Carrie and nemesis Chris (Portia Doubleday) come face-to-face on the road, with the corpse strewn high school ablaze in the background, Chris' undoing is as poetic and it is gruesome. Crashes and thuds are amplified so much, your skin vibrates.

As film finales go, the original version of Carrie remains unsurpassed; which might be why Peirce didn't bother to attempt to recreate it. What she came up with feels hurried and kind of lazy. If this is an attempt by Peirce, the acclaimed director of the Oscar-winning Boys Don't Cry, to go Hollywood, she just missed the mark. Not as catastrophic as the forgettable 2002 TV remake, Peirce's Carrie is scary, but ultimately unnecessary.

Horror stories: Halloween alternatives to the Carrie remake

It's all about the originals, beginning with the original 1973 movie The Exorcist , based on William Peter Blatty's bestselling novel. Even if you weren't Catholic, director William Friedkin (The Boys in the Band, Cruising­) made a groundbreaking horror movie that could scare the bejeezus out of anyone. By putting a human (and young) face on the demonic possession experience The Exorcist struck fear in audience members across the age spectrum. The special effects (pea soup, anyone?) were groundbreaking and have often been duplicated (with varying degrees of success) and celebrated for more than 40 years. For the record, the sequels sucked, so don't waste your time with them.

Carrie isn't the only fright fest from 1976 to get a remake. The terrifying The Omen , directed by Richard Donner, was unnecessarily remade 30 years later (released on 06.06.06, get it?). Once again, the first was the best (and the sequels were also dismal failures). The first Omen, about the adopted son of a US ambassador and his wife who turns out to be the Antichrist, had great acting (see Lee Remick), a tight and suspenseful script, and, for its time, cool special effects (see the decapitation and the spearing). The Omen, like The Exorcist, also provided audiences with nifty catchphrases, such as "Damien, it's all for you!"

The 1970s, which began with the horrifying Richard Nixon at the helm of the country and ended with the nightmare of the Iran hostage crisis during Jimmy Carter's reign, inspired multiple classic horror pix. At the tail end of the Me Decade John Carpenter's low budget slasher pic Halloween gave birth to a genre that would reign throughout the 1980s and the years that followed. A gory, edge-of-your-seat horror thriller, about an escaped lunatic with a fondness for carving knives, Halloween marked the big screen debut of Hollywood royalty Jamie Lee Curtis (her mother Janet Leigh was in Hitchcock's groundbreaking Psycho). PJ Soles (who was also in Brian De Palma's Carrie) also appears as a victim in the movie. Carpenter's Halloween, unnecessarily sequeled and remade to death, made Michael Myers a household name, one that would forever strike fear in the hearts of moviegoers and trick or treaters alike.