10 Most Disappointing Stephen King Movies

If ever an update of a King adaptation held promise, it was this modern retelling from Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) with Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore, so it’s a pity that the producers instead opted for a bland facsimile of Brian De Palma’s 1976 movie.

Moretz does what she can with a shop-worn character, but a sense of déjà vu hangs over her casting because she also played a vulnerable adolescent experiencing her first period in the Middleschool Date segment of the abysmal Movie 43 (2013). Moore plays her mother, taking over from Piper Laurie, whose naïve character lived in a world without Google, cell phones or 24-hour news, and was more credible for it. The advances in technology allow Carrie to wreak more havoc here, including a destructive finale that De Palma could have only dreamed of, but all the changes to the original story are cosmetic.

Throw in an uninteresting supporting cast (where’s John Travolta when you need him?) and you have a movie that’s a working definition of the term “underwhelming.” For a film whose plot hinges on a bloodbath, the results are sadly anaemic.