'Carrie'

You thought your prom night was bad. It doesn’t hold a shattered disco ball to that of Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz), the bullied teen in Stephen King’s debut novel whose telekinetic powers turn her high school dance into a hellscape. Of course, much of the story’s terror also comes from its depiction of draconian religious zealotry and vicious adolescent cruelty. In the new big-screen adaptation from Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce, Julianne Moore puts the mental in fundamentalism as Margaret, Carrie’s fire-and-brimstone mother, previously brought to memorable life by Piper Laurie in Brian De Palma’s 1976 film. ”One of the things that was revolutionary about Piper was that kind of fundamentalism was new to us,” says Moore. ”Now, 30 years later, we’ve seen it a lot, so mine needs to be a somewhat different performance.” The abuse Carrie faces at school also receives a modern-era makeover, with now-ubiquitous cell phones and social media adding a technological bent to her torment. Moore, a four-time Oscar nominee, feels a special connection to the story, and recalls how unnerved she was by De Palma’s film. ”I was 15 when it came out,” she says. ”I even had hair like Sissy Spacek.”