Mistakes were made

Carrie

Crit

Wow, there's one scary female in this movie, but her only supernatural power is the ability to make My Future Wife Julianne Moore repulsive. The scariest scene of the film is the first one, will Moore alone (well . . . ). The perfectly cast Chloë Grace Moretz isn't scary herself, though she is, obviously, a carrier of scary. Mostly she makes you wish, right until the blood spills, that you could protect her from what you know is coming. And from her nutball mother.

You know, my mother was very Catholic too, though not remotely as scary crazy as Carrie's. But some early scenes, when Mom is playing the humiliation card and the shame card, there was a certain resonance: that might have been me in a not altogether different universe. Is director Kimberly Peirce suggesting that religious devotion always lives just around the corner from religious looniness?

In any case, this was a good beginning to scary movies season, and I believe I may just watch the original film version tonight. I may have seen it from start to end once on commercial TV, but I've certainly never seen it uncut. I think a comparison might be fun.

Trailers

• About Last Night--Golly, it really is: a pretty-young-blacks-folks remake of the pretty-young-white-folks 1986 film based on David Mamet's play Sexual Perversity in Chicago!
• That Awkward Moment--And this could be its Caucasian clone, except for the one African-American couple.
• Endless Love--Don't know, don't care whether this is a remake of the 1981 film. Is it possible that anything with a title like this can be any good?
• Homefront--Tough guys, one of whom has a vulnerable young daughter. Screenwriter: Sylvester Stallone.