When I heard that the classic Brian De Palma picture CARRIE was being remade, I wondered why and didn’t really think I’d need to see it.

What changed my mind was that Kimberly Peirce director of BOYS DON’T CRY and STOP LOSS was at the helm and Julianne Moore was cast as the bible bashing self-harming harridan mother.

Who would have thought, even with those two venerable filmmakers, that the result would reverse my earlier reservations?!

Why? Because bullying has reached a hyperkinetic peak in contemporary times, cyberspace superseding primitive playground oppression, hectoring humiliation posted on the internet in a plethora of platforms that heighten the persecution.  Where once the torment and intimidation was localised, the vile vilification is now viral.And so this reimagining of CARRIE plugs straight into the zeitgeist of  vacuous  youth who have traded brain cells for cell phones,  where manners and morals  seem to have vanished, vanquished by  the pygmy minded text and twitter set, the very type that will bring their attention deficit to the cinema and plague other patrons with incessant smart phone fiddling.

Oh to be able to fling their phones telekinetically and douse them in pigs blood. Jumentous.

Chloe Grace Moretz plays Carrie, the naïve oppressed and ostracised teenager whose cluelessness about menstruation is a catalyst to catastrophe. Traumatised after being pelted by tampons by her peers, she is further terrorised by her God bothered mother, an infanticide harbouring horror played to the harrowing hilt by Julianne Moore.

Blood and bullying inform every frame of this movie, the latter escalating the other, until the finale which is literally a hell hath no fury like a woman scorned scenario writ large. A fascination with faces macerating windscreens is a favourite featured a few times and the famous crucifixion by cutlery is effectively choreographed.

CARRIE (MA) is a well crafted revenge fantasy for every nerd or nebbish that bore the brunt of a bully.