As I mentioned earlier this week, there is a new Carrie movie which is set to be released in March of next year. Since the trailer has been released this week, I decided to compare Carrie trailers to see how each trailer frames Carrie to the movie going public.
The first of many based on the original novel by Stephen King, the first Carrie movie was directed by Brian De Palma. The 1976 trailer seemed to capture Carrie’s struggle of trying to fit in at high school. It seemed to cater to perhaps a young to middle-aged adult demographic. Because of its November release, we can assume perhaps it was to get taken seriously due to the fact that Carrie is notable for being one of the few horror films to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards.
The first official sequel to the 1976 film, Carrie 2 was a promising attempt to create a modern version of Carrie. Directed by Katt Shea, the movie was considered a box office failure and was released to direct to DVD a few months after its release. Due its March release, we can assume this movie was to open out spring blockbusters. Unfortunately it seemed to end the bad movie season. The trailer focused much on the finale of the film opposed to the teen angst aspects. Because Carrie was so popular, the ending was no longer a surprise as this point.
The second movie based on the 1976 movie opposed to the book by Stephen King, was directed by British TV director David Carson. It was an attempt to garner attention to a possible Carrie TV series on NBC. Unfortunately the series did not take and the movie was panned by critics. The 2002 trailer had original shots within the first few seconds, but it then begins to copy the 1976 trailer verbatim. This remake trailer caters to a main stay TV audience around the same demographic as the 1976 trailer.
The last Carrie movie, directed by Kimberly Peirce, is supposed to be unique to the previous movies. According to Peirce, she is going to go off of the original Stephen King work than the De Palma film. From the looks of the trailer, the production has already taken a different direction. The trailer focuses on the destruction Carrie leaves in her wake while hearing the voices of others regarding the prom incident. After a few seconds of this, the end of the trailer focuses on an emotionally disturbed Carrie covered in blood. This seems to be a complete stand alone horror film to cater to the same audience as the 1976 film.
We have seen three Carrie movies so far. Can this fourth Carrie movie be as good as the first? I guess we will see after we get our tickets to the Prom in 2013.
Mrs. Critique 
I really like how you gave background information about previous Carrie movies and their directors with a quick synopsis of each. I also think that you did a good job explaining how the upcoming version will differ from the others. Generally I’m not much of a scary movie buff, but I may need to mark my calendars for this one.
Thank you for your comment. I’m glad you appreciated my blog.
Trailers are really powerful at setting up expectations and mood for a movie. It’s kind of weird how sometimes movie distributors don’t seem to be understand that, and then they create marketing campaigns that don’t make any sense. But anyway, Carrie is one of my very very favorite stories, so I really liked seeing this. I really hope the new movie doesn’t suck. But I guess even if it does, I still have my copy of the book and the DVD of the 1976 movie.
I didn’t dislike the 2002 version. It’s kind of pointless that it existed in the first place, being a remake of an already great movie and the pilot for a failed TV series, but I did appreciate the moments where it was closer to the book than the original movie. As for The Rage… yeah, that movie was pretty awful. It had a few moments where it was decent, but… ughhh, what a terrible movie.