Though this was one film I could understand being re-made as enough time had lapsed since DePalma's original and King's original story is timeless in many respects, to say the modern retelling is a good film is a hell of a stretch.

Most of the characters here are caricatures in their extremes, the special effects are just barely passable, and there's very little variation (at least in terms of what I recall) from the 1976 film. I was hoping the third act would be a cavalcade of messy, fitting deaths, but it was all fairly tame and perfunctory.

Still, it held my interest better than I thought it would, with a large part of that being down to an array of interesting shots constructed by director Kimberley Peirce.

I guess you could do worse looking for 100 minutes to kill.

2.5 Rigged Ballot Boxes for Carrie.