Carrie (2002)

In 2002 Carrie White made another foray to her senior prom, but this time the consequences were a little more dire for... the entire town. And what's worse? They tried to give Carrie her own weekly TV series!Now, to understand how this happened, one has to take into consideration where we were at in 2002. The 2001 fall TV season was delayed by the 9-11 attacks and, if memory serves, not a single show that premiered that season was a hit (despite the debuts of some great oddities like "Greg the Bunny" and the live-action "The Tick"). Nope, stunned audiences wanted the familiar sight of their "Friends," as well as other shows which had until that time been languishing on life-support. And to boot, we were still a year away from the trendy Michael Bay remake-of-the-week. It was at this point when some mindless exec at NBC had the brilliant idea to remake Carrie. It was familiar ground, after all. To give it some legitimacy, producer Paul Monash, who produced both the original film and the 1999 sequel, returned in "supervising producer" capacity (ultimately the remake would be his final production).Cast in the lead role was 29 year old waif Angela Bettis. Bettis had broken into showbiz nearly a decade earlier, but her passion was indie films and she generally only took bit parts in major films to support her penchant for starring in minor ones. It was the similarly-themed minor movie she had just finished, "May," which got the attention of producers -- however, Bettis was reluctant to accept the role. "I turned down Carrie three times before accepting," she told Fangoria. "But I'm a huge Stephen King fan and had this vision of them hiring someone who had never heard of him before. I finally said to myself, 'I've gotta defend Stephen King on this Carrie thing because he created such a wonderful character.'" On-hand for the filming was her friend and Mo-Freek Films partner, cult figure Skip Lotem, who chronicled the behind-the-scenes for his documentaries "Making Carrie" and "Skip Lotem Loves Carrie," which were available for sale/download on their website for a time.The claims from production honchos were that the movie was not a remake, but rather a faithful adaptation of King's novel. Should be pointed out that in the novel Carrie was overweight and Bobby Erbeter never shouted, "Creepy Carrie! Creepy Carrie!," so clearly the '76 production had an impact on this film. A then-still-badly-crippled King, meanwhile, had been so vehemently opposed to the 1999 sequel that he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with this production. Wait, that's probably not true. I'm sure he cashed the residual checks. Anyway, in the novel, Carrie destroyed the entire town with her telekinetic powers after leaving the prom, but it was deemed too costly to include the carnage in the '76 film, so it was omitted from the script. The new movie was to include both the town's destruction and the impending "White Investigation" that was a part of the novel's main narrative, as well as the prologue that was shot and deleted from the original film which featured a young Carrie summoning a hail of stones. "Well, here's the truth," Bettis later told TV Guide, "This is a joint effort between NBC and MGM. There's so many people to please, with so many ideas that everybody ends up making exceptions. One thing I noticed is some people wanted 90210, some wanted Stephen King."

However, there was one major deviation from the novel. "One of the studio's interests in redoing this was the prospect of possibly getting a TV series out of it," screenwriter Bryan Fuller told Fangoria for an online feature. "Approaching it from that angle there were all sorts of suggestions, that we had to have Carrie transfer her powers to Sue, or had to see another Carrie being born." Wait, Carrie gives birth to Tommy's love-child?!! Glad that didn't happen! "Everybody had a different motive about what would sell on TV," Bettis told TV Guide. "The ideas I've heard are Carrie and Sue Snell taking off for Florida like Thelma and Louise. I've heard something else about how the town reacts after this great catastrophe, like what happened after Columbine. Here's a girl dealing with her psychokinesis and the fact that she wiped out an entire town of people! So those are some ideas being bounced around, but who knows what would actually happen."

The cast included a roster of mostly then-unknown actors. Much like the original, the star of the remake has gone on to garner acclaim and have a big (horror) movie career, and some of her cast-mates have gone on to become minor stars in their own rite. In the role of lovable bitch Chris Hargenson was Emilie de Ravin, who would go on the be known as Lost's resident young-and-crazy mother Claire. Cast in the role of good-hearted Sue Snell was Kandyse McClure, who was upgraded to lieutenant for 54 episodes of "Battlestar Galactica." Katharine Isabel was no stranger to horror movies, having already appeared in "Disturbing Behavior" and the first of three "Ginger Snaps" movies, and she would go on to play a memorable role in "Freddy Vs. Jason." Clearly Isabel's character, Tina Blake, was modeled after the nasty character of Norma that P.J. Soles portrayed in the original film. In this movie, Norma is portrayed as a nice (and geeky) girl by Meghan Black, who was also voicing Rogue in "X-Men: Evolution" at the time. As Helen Shyres, the only one besides Sue to make a genuine effort to befriend Carrie, was Chelan Simmons, who'd go on to snag a supporting role in "Kyle X/Y" as well as bare all in "Final Destination 3" and portray one of the teenaged idiots in "Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil."

Instead of having Bettis play the role of young Carrie (as Spacek had done in the deleted prologue of the original film), an actress named Jodelle Ferland was hired. Ferland would go on to play the pivotal role of ghost-girl Mary Jensen in the epic 13-episode miniseries "Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital." In a weird twist of irony, Ferland also starred as the titular character in "Pictures of Hollis Woods," an acclaimed Hallmark TV movie in which she played a little girl who fought to stay with a foster mother whom was rapidly losing her mental faculties... and that senile old lady was played by Spacek. Carrie, meet Carrie.

In the role of Carrie's mother was Patricia Clarkson ("The Green Mile"), whose performance was subtly icy (unlike Piper Laurie's completely over-the-top characterization). In the new role of Detective Mulchaey was David Keith, yet another Stephen King veteran who had starred in "Firestarter" almost 20 years earlier. And playing the role of gym teacher Miss Desjardin was Rena Sofer, who has had a long and illustrious career in a vast array of short-lived TV shows.

Also given a role in the film was Jasmine Guy ("A Different World"), an actress whose career seemed on a downward slide at the time (and her inclusion in the cast certainly did nothing to give it a boost). Guy played Ruby Moore, a psychic investigator who was hot on the trail of Carrie... which led her to Detective Mulchaey, with whom she butted heads. You don't remember that part of the movie, you say? That's because Guy was completely omitted from the final cut. Co-star Keith later expressed sorrow over the removal of Guy's subplot, and her inclusion on the imdb page for the film baffled fans for a decade. Now, keeping this in mind....From the start, the film was cited as "3 hours," and just prior to the commencement of filming in June 2002, the press began referring to the film a "mini-series" (which it's sometimes still referred to as a result of the bloated 131 minute running time), though it ultimately aired on a single night in a three hour time slot. If it was originally intended to air over four hours, that means there's roughly 45ish minutes worth of footage that hasn't seen the light of day. And with an additional 45ish minutes, the film would clock in just under the three hour mark, which is both the proper running time for a 4 hour film sans commercials and the running time that was originally announced. Yep, it all adds up... so where the hell are all the friggin' deleted scenes, MGM?!

Early on, producers approached Hypnogaja, an L.A. band who had provided songs for numerous other TV series, to come up with some tunes for the movie. Hypnogaja handed over five songs from their then-forthcoming (and now out-of-print) album "Post-Hypnotic Stress Disorder," and Miles Meadows sported a t-shirt with the band's logo in the film. As production neared completion, the band's label, (the now-defunct) Access Denied Records, was asked to provide more music, and they coughed up a few more tracks by Sandra Lima, Sky Tyler a handful of instrumentals by Hypnogaja's frontman, Jason "ShyBoy" Arnold, and a few other incidental pieces of music. Kirsten Kaufman, who provided the prom song "The Time Is Now" (this film's "I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me") landed the job through nepotism: namely the film's music supervisor, Richard S. Kaufman. Access Denied pressed 2,000 CDs containing 11 of the songs from the film, and they were given away as promotion. Unfortunately, those discs were never easy to find but they seem to be becoming increasingly scarce. For the record, the soundtrack has never had a commercial release but mp3s have been circulating online amongst fans and soundtrack collectors since at least 2004. You can thank me later.

The movie was heavily promoted and debuted on NBC on November 4, 2002 -- exactly 26 years and one day after DePalma's original hit theatres. The 3-hour broadcast attracted 12 million viewers... which was wasn't significantly larger than the audience NBC usually got on Monday nights. Reviews were mixed, but tended to veer toward the positive, with most critics praising Bettis for her performance regardless of whether or not they had anything else good to say about the movie. Online, however, many fans of the original were (and still ARE) vocal in their discontent over the remake. "If I weren't in it, I wouldn't have watched it," Bettis told Ain't It Cool News in 2003. "I would have been one of those people that was like, 'Down with the Carrie remake!'" In the same breath, she also mentioned that "May" writer/director (and her future frequent-collaborator) Lucky McKee "hates it. Lucky HATED it!" The following spring it was clear that NBC wasn't going to pursue a weekly series, but Bettis hardly had time to notice, as "May" was just getting a mainstream American release and a lot of acclaim. "Carrie" reran on NBC at the end of the summer of 2003, quickly secured a DVD release, and went on to be played in heavy rotation on the USA and Sci-Fi networks. Bettis, meanwhile, openly embraced the moniker "scream queen" and went on to make a slew of horror movies, including the grisly remake of "The Toolbox Murders," the ambitious one-take psychological horror oddity "The Circle," and the under-appreciated "Roman," in which she and McKee reversed their roles (she wrote and directed, he starred).

Seemed that Carrie was finally laid to rest.... until 2011, when another remake was announced. Jeez, this bitch just won't stay dead, will she?