When it comes to going out to see a movie in Oregon, there aren’t many options for theater chains.  Regal has displaced or absorbed pretty much every movie theater within 50 miles, so I wind up sitting through the “REGAL FIRST LOOK” far too often for my liking – and, as much as I would like to claim that I am immune to commercials, occasionally it will stick something in my head to the point where I go and watch it.

That’s how I wound up adding the 2013 “Carrie” remake to my Netflix DVD queue.

It was a horrifying experience.  Not the movie, mind you, the movie was fine and I’ll get to it in a bit.

I usually time-shift DVDs from Netflix; I rip them to the media server, send back the disc and watch the actual movie when I feel like it.  This was the first time in a very long time where I’d tossed a physical disc into the DVD tray and sat down in front of it, and THAT was the horrifying part.  It was a solid 10 minutes of non-skippable trailers, studio promos, “this movie would be better on blu-ray” and of course warnings of dire consequences should I pirate the movie before I got to the disc menu.

The movie, on the other hand, was pretty much a superhero origin movie, and if Carrie had wound up in spandex tights at the end I would not have been terribly startled.  I haven’t seen the 1970s original to compare, but this one was pretty much girl-gets-bullied, girl-discovers-she-has-psychic-powers, girl-gets-bullied-more, bullies-discover-girl-has-psychic-powers.  There’s a body count, sure, but the character is shown in such a sympathetic manner that it’s hard to put her in the villain category.

Sadly, this was a Sony movie so I don’t think we’ll be seeing Carrie White as the newest member of the X-Men.  She could team up with Spider-Man, I guess.  I’d legitimately pay money to see that movie.