The last day of a festival is always bitter, rarely sweet. No matter how exhausted your bones are, or how badly your spine begs for a chiropractor, if the festival was a success you could do it all again for another two weeks. It’s with this dread, and a double shot of espresso to keep the focus, that I entered my last screening; Olivier Assayas’ Clouds Of Sils Maria. The final film shown in competition with a superstar cast of Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, and Chloe Moretz; three women representing three different generations in a story about coming to terms with the past, age, and the consequences of time. Sounds kind of lovely, doesn’t it? Not sure what happened then, because Assayas found a way to drop the ball on this one and produced a lazy, uninspired, and forlorn piece of work.

Maria Enders (Binoche) is a famous stage and film actress who is offered a role for a play she has a deep and personal connection to. The play is about a young seductress called Sigrid who manipulates the older Hanna into a lesbian relationship only to leave her brokenhearted and forgotten by the end. 20 years ago, Maria played Sigrid and immersed herself into the role so much that it mirrored her own personality. Now, after the death of the playwright who wrote the piece, Maria reluctantly accepts the much weaker role of Hanna, but has trouble coming to terms with the way the character is written as it fills her with past memories and present insecurities about her own relevance. With the help of her assistant Valentine (Stewart), she begins to rehearse the role and has slight trepidation and pretentious misgivings with the idea of working with Jo-Anne (Moretz), the 19-year-old Hollywood superstar who has a Lindsay Lohan temperament.

There is so much there to grab on to, it’s a shame Assays butterfingers practically every element of the story. The main conflict, Maria’s relationship with the role, is written with such melodrama that it forces a rather minor performance by one of cinema’s all time greats, Binoche. Her work in English has always been slightly inferior to her French roles, but it just never seems like she gets under the skin of her character and leaves a trail of overacted scenes. Stewart has never been better, and yet she’s still stuck in a stifled shell; even when she’s at her most animated. While Moretz brings in the laughs and proves to be the aspirin for the headache induced by the scenes she’s not in. She, too, has never been better but unfortunately we get much more stifled Stewart than catty Moretz.

The biggest obstacles, however, lie in the execution of the story not the actors who do their very best with what they have. Assayas is squarely to blame for the poorly written dialogue which sounds like it was copy-pasted from some Bold and the Beautiful episode and for montage sequences which make absolutely no contextual sense, only serving to push us away and check our watches. The name of the play is tied into the phenomenon evoked by clouds and wind in the mountains of Sils Maria, where Maria rehearses her part. While the imagery is captivating, and the idea even more so, the meaning behind it is lost in a haze of poorly edited and awkwardly placed images desperate to attach themselves symbolically to characters who are too poorly written to be attached to anything. Not even with the help of 3D glasses would you find three dimensions anywhere in this film.

So, my Cannes festival ends on something of a sour note screening-wise (though, a soon-to-be-published article will show you the high it actually ended on) because Olivier Assayas, usually so on point, missed all his targets with Clouds Of Sils Maria. Fans of Stewart will declare her Best Supporting Actress material mostly because this is her greatest role yet, Moretz surprises in a funny parody of Hollywood celebrities, and Binoche makes you miss Julianne Moore’s batshit crazy and entertaining woman with similar issues in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars. Watch this only if you’re a diehard fan of someone involved, or if you’re interested in seeing what a comic book movie directed by Assayas would look like (a highlight among the weariness.) Otherwise, this thematically redundant and soapy opera full of flat notes is not worth your time.

Originally published on May 24th, 2014 during the Cannes Film Festival.

Prior to the release of her wildly successful third novel “Gone Girl” Gillian Flynn published another mildly success novel, “Dark Places.” Following last year’s much-discussed release of Gone Girl, Dark Places is set to follow suit in a new thriller starring Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Christina Hendricks, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Corey Stoll with a brand new international trailer released today (yay, France!). Pretty Things and Sarah’s Key director Gilles Paquet-Brenner adapted the book and directs the film, his first new project in half a decade.

Theron stars as Libby Day, a woman whose family was brutally killed while she was a child. Her brother was accused of the murders but now a secret crime-solving society called The Kill Club force her to re-examine that painful day and uncover the truth. The film opens in France on April 8th, but U.S. distributor A24 Films has yet to set a domestic release date.

Dark Places trailer

Dark Places poster

Coming off a disappointing previous film (Touchy Feely), director Lynn Shelton returns with Laggies to what she does best —examining likable but flawed characters at a crossroads in their life. Working from a script she didn’t write (a first for the director) and her largest budget to date, Shelton ditches her typical improvisational approach for a more conventional structure. But even with a more refined technique, Laggies still obtains excellent chemistry between its cast, giving off the authentic vibe that we’re used to seeing in Shelton’s work.

It’s been over 10 years since Megan (Keira Knightley) graduated from high school, and while her friends are getting married, having babies, and starting up their own restaurant, Megan twirls signs on the street for her father (Jeff Garlin). It slowly dawns on her that she’s lagging behind her peers and just floating through life. She needs some time away from her social group and her boyfriend Anthony (played by Mark Webber, who always gets typecast for these kind of roles) to clear her mind and to find herself.

This is when the film begins to test your ability to overlook and roll with the nonsensical developments. After buying beer for a group of underage high schoolers, Megan forms a close friendship with one of them named Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz). Megan decides to cash in her I-O-U from Annika for the beer and devises a plan to get away from her routine for a while. So she tells everyone she’s going on a weeklong self-development seminar, but instead stays with Annika at her father’s (Sam Rockwell) house. Like the audience, her father questions Megan’s motives but it doesn’t take much arm twisting before he allows her to stay. Everything goes according to plan until Megan develops feelings for Annika’s father, which threatens to ruin her relationships with Annika and Anthony.

Shelton continues to show her extraordinary ability to get the best performances out of her cast. Knightley puts on the best performance of her career by dominating her own scenes and enhancing everyone else’s around her. Moretz is very much in her comfort zone playing a snippy teenager and pairs well with Knightley. Rockwell has the luxury of getting the best material to work with, playing both the cool dad and the love interest with the effortless charm he’s known for.

There are some great life messages in Laggies, namely about gaining perspective on life while helping others avoid making those same mistakes. Another theme throughout is on the nature of relationships, their fragility and the constant attention needed to make them last. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of predictable moments in Laggies. It’s far too easy to guess how the story’s plot points will turn out before they happen. A predictability that is of course dissatisfying. Filled with solid performances from everyone involved, and an enjoyable original soundtrack by Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), Laggies is Lynn Shelton’s most accessible and crowd-pleasing film to date. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of believability and few moments that contain her unique style, making the film feel overly familiar and generic.

The Mill Valley Film Festival has built a reputation as a showcase for future Oscar winners and emergent independent and foreign filmmakers. The festival has hosted five of the last six Best Picture Oscar winners, rolling out the red carpet for A-list actors and filmmakers while heavily supporting local filmmakers as well. Nestled in one of the most beautiful places in the world, filmmakers, actors, and attendees alike are drawn to Mill Valley every year by the easy, low-stress atmosphere, the gorgeous surroundings, the varied special events and, of course, the films. In its 37th year, the festival looks to deliver everything loyal festival-goers expect and more.

“Variety has said once–probably more than once–that Mill Valley has the ambience of a destination festival and the clout of an urban festival,” said festival founder and director Mark Fishkin at yesterday’s press conference. “Change” is one of the themes of this year’s festival, with the folks behind the festival embracing the evolving landscape of film and film distribution. Said Fishkin: “For us, change is inevitable, but we are still part of a special division of the film industry, which is theatrical exhibition. We take our role as curators very seriously, whether it’s films that are coming from the Bay Area or films coming from Cannes.”

The Homesman

Tommy Lee Jones‘ latest offering, The Homesman, will open the festival, with star Hilary Swank set to attend. The film is a Western, following a claim jumper (Jones) and a young woman (Swank) as they escort three insane woman through the treacherous frontier between Nebraska and Iowa. Fishkin describes it as a “feminist Western” that is “extremely moving. We’re just so proud to be showing it in this year’s festival.”

Co-headlining opening night is Men, Women, & Children, Jason Reitman‘s new film starring Ansel Elgort, Adam Sandler, Judy Greer, and Jennifer Garner that explores the strange effect the internet age has on parents and their teens. Reitman will be in attendance to present. Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies will also play opening night, completing the killer triple-threat. The film, about a woman stuck in slacker adolescence, stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Keira Knightley, and Sam Rockwell.

The festival looks to finish as strong as it started, with Jean-Marc Valée‘s follow-up to Dallas Buyers Club, spiritual quest movie Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed, who embarked on a 1,100-mile hike to heal deep emotional wounds. Laura Dern also stars, and will be honored with a tribute.

French favorite Juliette Binoche stars across Kristen Stewart in Clouds of Sils Maria. Binoche plays an actress who’s asked to return to a play that made her famous 20 years ago, but this time in an older role, forcing her to reflect on the young woman she once was and what she’s become since. Another French actress who can do no wrong, Marion Cotillard is outstanding in the Dardenne brothers’ new film, Two Days, One Night. Recalling the best of Italian neorealism, the film follows a woman who’s got a weekend to convince her co-workers to forego their bonuses to save her job.

The Theory of Everything

Two emerging young actors will be spotlighted as Eddie Redmayne and Elle Fanning will be in attendance to discuss their respective new films. Fanning stars in Low Down, which views the troubled life of jazz pianist Joe Albany (John Hawkes) from the perspective of his teenage daughter (Fanning). Set in the ’70s, the film also stars Glenn Close, Peter Dinklage, and Lena Headey. In a breakout performance, Redmayne portrays legendary physicist Stephen Hawking in the stirring biopic The Theory of Everything, which is quickly generating momentum on the festival circuit.

Several other films that have been building steam on the festival circuit will play at the festival as well. English landscape painter J. M. W. Turner is played brilliantly by Timothy Spall in Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner, which we loved at Cannes. Also portraying a significant real-life figure is Benedict Cumberbatch, who stars in The Imitation Game, the story of English mathematician Alan Turing and his groundbreaking intelligence work during World War II. Steve Carell‘s highly-anticipated turn in Foxcatcher as John Du Pont, the man who shot olympic great David Schultz, will surely continue to stir up Oscar talk as the film plays late in the festival. Robert Downey Jr. stars as a big city lawyer who returns home to defend his father (Robert Duvall), the town judge, who is suspected of murder.

Metallica is set to play a pleasantly unexpected role in the festival as his year’s artist in residence, with each of the four members of the band presenting a film. Drummer Lars Ulrich has naturally chosen to highlight Whiplash, Damien Chazelle‘s drama about a young aspiring drummer and his relentless instructor. Chazelle will also be in attendance. Lead singer James Hetfield has chosen to present a classic, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, while guitarist Kirk Hammett, one of the world’s foremost horror aficionados, will offer up Dracula vs. Frankenstein. Bassist Robert Trujillo is showing a sneak peek at a documentary he produced himself, Jaco, which tells the story of legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius.

On the local side of things is a special screening of Soul of a Banquet, a documentary by filmmaker Wayne Wang  about celebrity chef Cecilia Chang. Wang and Chang, who both have deep San Francisco Bay Area roots, will be in attendance to celebrate their storied careers and present their film collaboration. Chuck Workman, another Bay Area legend who’s best known for editing the clip reels at the Oscars, will be honored at the festival as well.

Freaked out by a sudden marriage proposal, Megan (Keira Knightley) takes a week to lay low at the house of a high schooler (Chloë Grace Moretz) that she’s only just met. Sometime after Megan’s bought her new teenage hangers on beers, made out with her young friend’s father, and tweaked the nipples of a Buddha statue, it becomes clear that Moretz isn’t playing the only adolescent in Laggies.

From Humpday and Touchy Feely director Lynn Shelton, her first feature based on a script she didn’t pen (that credit goes to first-time scribe Andrea Seigel), Laggies debuted at this year’s Sundance film festival to mostly positive reviews. Many noted that the Megan role is one of the best Knightley’s had in her career, and makes for great use of her abilities as an actress. Coming off of her starring role in Begin Again, Knightley’s established a side to her career that doesn’t need to involve the Pirates franchise or Jane Austen novels but instead sees her playing far more normal characters.

The film also stars Sam Rockwell. Which is good news, because he’s Sam Rockwell. Check out Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz and Sam Rockwell in the new trailer and teaser poster from director Lynn Shelton’s upcoming coming-of-age comedy Laggies — opening in select theaters October 24h!

Laggies trailer

Laggies movie poster

Brian De Palma makes classics–from the gangster guts ‘n’ glory of Scarface to the thrilling cinematic barrage of Blow Out, his films will go down as some of the best in memory. Much like Gus Van Sant did with his re-imagining of Psycho, director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop Loss) faces a seemingly insurmountable uphill battle with her remake of one of De Palma’s greatest, the cult horror classic, Carrie. And, just like Van Sant, she bravely goes toe to toe, scene for scene, with an all-time great auteur, essentially mimicking the narrative structure of De Palma’s film which inherently, daringly says, “I can do better.” She’s got guts.

Look–it’s not impossible to improve upon a classic. Just look at De Palma’s own Scarface or Joe Cocker’s version of The Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Does Peirce hold her own against the excellence of De Palma’s 1976 original? On some levels, yes, she does–her riffs on certain scenes are actually better than De Palma’s. But, overall, Peirce’s film is bested by the elegance, purity, and raw high school terror of the original, as she wastes time with trivial infusions of modernity and assembles a glaringly uneven cast.

The weight of the horned beast that is high school is enough to break anybody, and when you’re a bullied social outcast like Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz), the pressure is tremendous. Compounding the horrors of high school is her traumatic home life, which she shares with her psychotic, self-destructive mother, Margaret (Julianne Moore, monstrous), who beats into Carrie’s head (sometimes literally) that life’s pleasures are constructs of the devil and stuffs her into a dingy closet full of gothic religious knick-knacks on the regular. When we, along with Carrie, discover that she has potentially destructive (Peirce hammers this home) telekinetic powers, all of a sudden we have a classic “ticking time bomb” story on our hands. Smashed between two equally unbearable worlds, it’s only a matter of time before Carrie’s frustration erupts in a shower of destruction.

The original story (penned by Stephen King in the novel that spawned it all) had a simple shape, an elegant upward curve tarting with a trickle of blood–a flock of mean girls “stoning” a desperately confused Carrie with tampons–and ending with a bucket of pig’s blood that prompts Carrie to unleash hell. Peirce, however, mucks it up by introducing the modern complication of cell phone videos-gone-viral, which adds nothing interesting to the story and only serves to meddle with the pitch-perfect flow of King’s narrative. She’s also crafted a much more brutal, gory film here, with the super-power violence of the finale bearing a striking resemblance to the carnage at the end of last year’s Chronicle (a similar film, in many ways). The disgusting kills Peirce presents don’t seem to gel with the story as much as De Palma’s tamer sequences, but hell, the epic gore-storm is still a ton of fun to watch.

Sissy Spacek was iconic in her turn as the vengeful Carrie, and Moretz puts on a fine performance herself, though the blood-soaked dress doesn’t fit her quite as well. Moretz doesn’t convey frailty or meekness as well as Spacek does (few could), but the camera loves her (she was born to be on screen) and her more imposing physicality appropriately matches the inflated violence of Peirce’s version of the tale. During the explosive finale, she’s an otherworldly force of nature that’s more bad-ass (Kick-Ass?) than frightening, and though I prefer De Palma and Spacek’s more chilling take on the character, Peirce and Moretz super-villain version of Carrie White is stunning in its own right.

As mentioned, the cast is uneven, but sitting right at the top of the slope is Julianne Moore, who is, actually, much more terrifying and riveting than Piper Laurie, who originally played the sadistic Momma White. Moore’s deranged whispers and coos toe the line between disturbing and silly, but like the veteran she is, she always lands on the side of the former. She inflicts just as much, if not more, damage on herself than she does her daughter, jabbing sharp objects into her arms and thighs constantly, in some twisted form of repentance. The scenes between Moore and Moretz are unquestionably the best in the film, and they make the drama that plays out in the high school seem like they’re from a different, lesser movie. Portia Doubleday plays a decent bitch as Chris Hargensen, Carrie’s prime tormentor, but Gabriella Wilde is useless as Sue Snell, a remorseful rich girl who pushes her boyfriend Tommy (Ansel Elgort) to take Carrie to the prom in a misguided act of charity. When sharing the screen with pros the caliber of Moore and Moretz, it’s hard not to get overshadowed, and they do.

Cinematically, Carrie no slouch, with some truly expertly crafted sequences. In De Palma’s film, a scene in which Tommy asks Carrie to prom on her doorstep at night is unremarkable at best, with Spacek looking over her shoulder in fear that her mother will catch them. In Peirce’s riff on the sequence, she puts the teens out in front of the house in broad daylight, with Moretz frantically scanning the road for her mother’s car, as she could be arriving at any moment. It’s much more suspenseful and engaging than the original setup, which says a lot about Peirce as a filmmaker. While De Palma’s Carrie is a film of camerawork, Peirce’s is one of editing, employing subjective cuts and slow-motion to generate momentum.

It’s difficult not to compare Carrie to the original 1976 version due to Peirce’s decision to essentially tell the same story, with only a few tweaks and updates here and there. While Peirce’s more muscly, less refined film doesn’t quite measure up to De Palma’s masterpiece, it dwarfs the typical torture-porn fare that we’re so inundated with during Halloween season. The ambition of Peirce, Moretz, and Moore shines through in the film’s strongest moments, and though the supporting players and shaky contemporary revisions weigh the film down, Peirce deserves credit for putting up one hell of a fight.

This Friday, the girl in the blood-soaked prom dress returns to wreak havoc on the masses in Carrie, a re-imagining of Brian De Palma’s beloved 1976 horror gem. Helmed by director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss), the film again follows the complex, violently turbulent relationship between outcast quiet-girl Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz), a girl with telekinetic powers, and her creepily religious mother, Margaret (Julianne Moore). Carrie, who’s constantly bullied at school, suspiciously gets asked to prom by a popular jock, but her magical night turns bloody as the bullying gets out of hand.

During a roundtable interview, Peirce went in-depth into her affection for De Palma’s film, why she chose to remake it, how the film is a superhero origin story, infusing the story with modernity, casting her talented leading ladies, and more.

Carrie opens this Friday, October 18th.

It’s a bit of a herculean task remaking one of the great cult horror films of our time, and Peirce needed to make sure that the project was the right fit. “I’m not necessarily for or against re-imaginings,” Peirce explained. “To me, it’s an opportunity; the question is, is it a good opportunity? When [the studio] came to me with the project, the first thing I thought was that I love Brian De Palma. He’s a fantastic director and I love his original. Actually, I’m friends with him. He was really supportive of me, so I felt I had to talk to him about it. He said, ‘I think you should do it.’ Once I cleared that hurdle, I picked up the book, which I had read as a kid, and dove back in. I read it back to back three times, because it’s so compelling.”

What ultimately drove her to want to make the movie more than anything was her fascination with the Carrie White character. “She’s a misfit, a social outcast,” Peirce said of the iconic character. “What I love is that she wanted love and acceptance, and she was up against huge obstacles. The girls at school make it impossible [for her]. At home, she has this amazing relationship with her mother, [who] loves her, but is also feuding with her because she thinks [Carrie’s] evil. Carrie’s up against these obstacles, but will do anything to overcome them to get what she wants. I love that. I love that there’s a Cinderella component, that she wants to wear a beautiful dress, go to the ball, and dance with a handsome boy. That, to me, is fantastic.”

Structurally, Peirce goes virtually scene for scene with De Palma in her take on the story, though she gives modern updates many of the key narrative components and makes them her own, including the mother-daughter relationship. “They’re locked in this love affair and this feud,” Peirce told us. “This is where this movie needs to begin. We need to begin in this relationship. It was imperative to me that you could follow this and it would escalate all the way to the climax, where they basically come to blows with one another. The powers come out; they unconsciously erupt, and then the duel begins. I made sure that the duel was much more violent and brutal than it ever has been.”

“Stephen King had written a classic story that was timely, timeless, and ahead of its time,” Perice said of the original novel. “It looked at emotional and physical empowerment and violence, it looked at wanting to fit in, it looked at superpowers…all this stuff. What it presupposed was that we were going to move into the moment we’re in now, in which social networking…our phones take videos, pictures…how many times do you find yourself living through something and someone’s recording it? Human beings have been telling stories since the beginning of time. We now live in a mode where we’re obsessed with recording ourselves. The devices we have have the ability to maximize human contact, for better or for worse. For me, it was important I ran through the story the modernity we live in. I was interviewing teachers and principals, and I said, ‘Tell me what the situation is now, and how is it different than five years ago?’ They said the difference is, the kids with these devices, this stuff goes viral. It’s not just dangerous for the kid who got tormented–it’s dangerous for the kids who torment, because they can now be implicated. And, it’s dangerous for the schools. They don’t want to be on the Today Show. I said wow, that’s gold, entertainment-wise.”

Peirce continued: “I saw it as a superhero origin story. That was really exciting to me. Maybe it’s because we’ve had the great benefit of the great Marvel movies, but these are real stories. What I loved was that the powers were part of Carrie’s personality. They were part of her survival. If you’re a misfit and you can’t fit into the social spectrum, you’re lonely, you can’t get love and support at home, then you find you have a talent–you can write, direct, photograph, or you’re good at business–whatever your talent is, that’s your mode of survival. That’s what the powers were for her. She researches [her powers], and she realizes, “Oh my god, there are other people like me! Maybe I’m normal!'”

Carrie is an outcast’s tale, and Peirce wanted to make sure that her take on the story retained that perspective. “There was an equation to the entertainment. We had to make sure we [followed] Carrie’s footsteps every step of the way. There were forces that were suggesting maybe we shouldn’t identify with Carrie, [but rather] the leggy blonde girl. I was like, ‘No no no.’ This is a story about a misfit, because we’re all misfits. Whether it’s at your job, you school, with your family, with your friends, on some level, human dynamics are always shifting, and we’re all misfits on some level, somewhere.”

When Peirce first saw De Palma’s film, it was overseas, butit was a sort of strangely patriotic experience for her. “I believe I saw it in Japan,” Peirce recalled. “I left the states when I was 18 with my boyfriend. I spent the first year in Japan saying, ‘I need to be independent of this system that is so much about success in a very narrow channel.’ Once I freed myself from that [by] learning Japanese and photographing all over the place, I had a huge craving to come back to the States and be an American again, with a newfound understanding of my own identity. In many ways, my stories are always about identity. I started going to the American Consulate all the time, and I started consuming American culture. It was like I was looking for the most American pieces of film to reorient myself. With De Palma’s film, it was very much like seeing 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita, it gave me permission to dream, in terms of cinema. I loved it.”

There have been rumors floating around the cinemasphere that Peirce filmed multiple alternate endings for the film, though she quickly refuted them. “That is a rumor,” she asserted. “We spent a lot of time thinking about the ending, but there aren’t five or six. We explored different avenues to get the ending right, definitely, but not that [many] of them.” Still, she wasn’t bothered at all by the gossip. “I like rumors!” she confessed.

De Palma’s film is a wonderful piece of horror cinema, but Peirce didn’t shy away from attempting to improve certain scenes she thought could do with a re-write. In one scene from the original, Carrie’s crush asks her to prom on her doorstep, but Peirce thought the setup was a bit implausible. “[For] that scene, we started asking, well, is it really realistic that the mother would have been in that house and not come to the door?” Peirce told us. “We [thought], not really. The mother shouldn’t be there, but once we took the mother out, we thought the mother’s presence should be there. The only way to have the mother’s presence there without her in the house would be to have her coming home. Since I [have her working at] the dry cleaner, we had a basis for her being out of the house. So, she’s coming home from work, Carrie’s told she needs to go right home and never talk to strangers, and the car coming could actually be a threat. I love screenwriting for that reason, because it’s like problem solving.”

Moretz (Let Me In, Kick-Ass) is one of the brightest young actresses in the movies today, but she had quite large shoes to fill, as Sissy Spacek’s original turn as the vengeful high-schooler is so canonized and revered. Peirce detailed the many facets of Carrie that Moretz had to embody.”What was important to me was that you had to be deeply in love with Carrie and walk in her footsteps. This had to be a very point-of-view movie, so I needed somebody who had the warmth and the love, but [she also needed to transform] into a human monster. You needed to love her; you needed to want her to succeed at the prom; you needed her to become a human monster; when she turned and the powers leaked out, you had to buy it; when she does the revenge tale, you still needed to be sympathetic to her. That was everything. If you ever lost your sympathy for Carrie, the movie didn’t work.”

Despite the immense talent Moretz possesses, there was still work to be done for her to truly become Carrie White. Peirce recalled one of the first conversations she had with Moretz on set. “‘You’re amazing, but look at you!'” she remembers saying to Moretz. “‘You’re so confident, you’ve got a family that loves you, and you live on the world stage. You could not be farther from Carrie White.’ I said, ‘It’s imperative that we get rid of your confidence, we make you fragile, you’re underprivileged instead of overprivileged, and your mother’s very complicated with you.’ Peirce went to great lengths to instill the despair of the character into Moretz.

“We went to homeless shelters and I had her meet women who unfortunately had challenging circumstances. I said to her, ‘I don’t want you to just learn their stories. I want you to learn them. I want you to try to vibrate the way they vibrate, feel what they feel.’ We just kept doing exercises and pushing her there.”

Peirce then explained the complexities required to play the other, more frightening half of the mother-daughter duo. “Here’s a woman who loves her daughter, but feuds with her because she thinks her daughter has evil powers. She also is a woman who is afraid to leave the house because she’s afraid of the outside world. She uses corporal punishment on her daughter, but as Julianne will tell you, she uses it even more on herself. She doesn’t want to hurt her daughter and would rather hurt herself. It’s such a beautiful way of looking at that character. And, she’s created her own religion. Religion is very important in the movie, but if you look closely, it’s her religion. Like Carrie says, ‘Mom, that’s not even in the bible!’ She may be telling Carrie all this scripture that may not even be in the bible.”

With Moore, Peirce felt she had found the perfect woman for the job. “Julianne was the only person who could play that role because she’s one of our great living actresses,” Peirce gushed. “She’s warm, sensual, sexual, beautiful, a consummate professional. She’s a great mother to her children, so she carries with her an understanding of motherhood. Chloe brings a wonderful understanding of being a daughter, but she isn’t yet an adult. She’s still growing, so when they got together, the relationship took off. They really worked together in ways that were profound.”

As an example of their strong onscreen chemistry, Peirce pointed to one of the original film’s most unforgettable scenes. “They’re showing the closet scene on TV, where Julianne pushes Chloe in.” Capturing the right tone for the physical struggle proved to be more difficult than expected. “We did the first take of the scene, and I was like, ‘Whoa, that was too easy.’ I went to Chloe, and I said, ‘You’re making it too easy for her to push you in. You need to fight back.’ She fought back a little bit, and I said, ‘I see the problem. You have too much respect for Julianne Moore! Forget your respect for Julianne Moore. You’re terrified of that closet. You’re going to fight to the death–you’re not going in that closet!’ In the take used in the film, Moretz doesn’t show any respect for Moore and fights for her life. “Julianne was sweating and she had to work harder. She works harder, Chloe works harder, and all of a sudden, you have a relationship.”