When this movie was announced, I was worried about Chloe being cast as Carrie. I really like her in a lot of movies (practically all of her other movies), but I thought she would have her biggest challenge in convincing us she could be an outcast like Carrie (no, the outcast she portrayed in Kick-Ass was a different type).
I watched the movie hoping for the best. She is a good actress and she might have pulled it off against my expectations. Sadly, I think she did not do it. Her Carrie seems to be a pretty well adjusted girl. Yes, she is bad at sports, but it seems like the other girls are laughing with her, not at her. She even joins in the jokes. I never got the feeling she was kept totally out of the circle, by others or by herself. She could join in at any time and leave if she so desired it. Her eyes never looked to me like they were hiding hurt feelings and yearning for something out of her reach.
I really liked how Margaret's love for Carrie was more apparent, as that was a favorite part of the book for me. However I loved the original movie's Margaret's performance. I know people in real life who are like that. And she made much sense of why Carrie inherited the "outcast" label, even before she could do anything on her own to either "earn" it or get rid of it. The new one may be scary in how she keeps all her troubles hidden (the self-hurting is present in both movies, but the first one uses it in an in-your-face way while this one is very discreet). This Margaret White looks more "normal" and could even be accepted by people, even if they did not actually speak to her: they would look at her and think no more of it. The old one had people talking about her (and her daughter) all the time.
What I liked the best about the movie were the portrayals of Carrie's classmates. I see Tommy Ross (from the book) as an almost perfect human being (just like Duma Key's Jack Cantori). Good at everything. Sports, school, good-looks. He is even nice to the outcasts. This movie made me see him like that (unlike the first movie) and I am grateful for it. Sue Snell was the same way. She was physically beautiful and made a good job of showing her remorse (the original did a good job, also, so they both did well; the advantage of this one is that she is blonde, like in the book).
There was much for me to like in this movie, but quite a few points are lost by not making the Whites more rejected. It feels as if Carrie was simply overreacting when people did not treat her differently than they did others or how she herself treated them.