Chloe Moretz, Julianne Moore, 'Carrie' cast talk horror movies

Everyone has a movie they saw too young. It’s basically a rite of passage — being self-aware enough to know that what you’re watching is beyond your years, but suffering through it anyway. Why do you think we include it in our Pop Culture Personality Tests?

At the Los Angeles premiere of Carrie, director Kimberly Peirce’s re-imagining of Stephen King’s 1974 horror classic (and Brian De Palma’s 1976 film), stars Chloë Moretz, Julianne Moore, and Judy Greer recounted their own tales of the movies that traumatized them in their youth.

Julianne Moore, who plays the part of Carrie White’s religious zealot mother, recalled an image that haunted her for years. “I did see a James Bond movie with my parents when I was really, really little and a woman was poisoned in it, so I was always afraid that poison was going to drip down from the ceiling. I thought it would go in my mouth and I’d be poisoned,” the four-time Oscar nominee said of 1967’s You Only Live Twice.

For director Kimberly Peirce, it was William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. “I was way too young,” she laughed. “While I was watching it someone in my family in the pitch black when her head was spinning around, somebody reached down and grabbed my leg and yanked me up, and I don’t think I’ve recovered,” she said. “I was too young. It was too awful. That’s why I had to make this movie. I’m still processing it.”

Judy Greer, who plays Carrie’s sympathetic teacher, actively sought out Friday the 13th Part III and immediately regretted it. “My parents forbid me to go see it and I snuck out anyway with my babysitter and then I had nightmares ever since,” Greer said. “They were right. I’m sorry mom and dad!”

Chloë Moretz is another story. The 16-year-old actress who stars as the titular telekinetic teen cut her teeth starring in the horror genre in films such as 2005’s update on The Amityville Horror and 2010’s Let Me In, a remake of the Swedish nail-biter Let the Right One In. “I was never traumatized by a movie. I would get terrified and then I would get really excited, and I was like ‘what is this feeling?!’,” said Moretz confidently.

Moretz’s handler looked skeptical. “Blair Witch didn’t freak you out?” she said. Moretz knew she’d been had. “That’s different. That’s Blair Witch! I don’t know anyone ever in life who hasn’t been afraid of Blair Witch. If you’re not afraid of that movie, you’re like, sadistic.”