Brian De Palma’s 1976 classic Carrie is overdue for a reboot, but who would work in the main roles if the iconic horror were remade today? Released in 1974, Stephen King’s Carrie was a smash hit bestseller that propelled its author to overnight stardom. Awarded a massive advance pre-publication, the epistolary horror novel told the twisted tale of a small-town girl who is bullied by her peers and abused by her religious zealot mother until one day she just snaps.
Said snapping includes a terrific, horrifying sequence of her slaughtering an entire prom with hitherto-hinted-at psychic powers, before returning home to off her unrepentant mother. The novel spawned a movie adaptation helmed by camp horror legend Brian De Palma, and the 1976 movie Carrie was almost as huge a success as the original novel, becoming an iconic piece of horror history.
In the years since, there have been several Carrie remakes, as the story has been subject to numerous made-for-TV sequels and re-dos, countless rip-offs, an anodyne, sanitized 2013 big-budget Hollywood remake, and even a musical (which was itself covered in a Riverdale episode). However, Carrie has yet to receive a big-screen re-do that does justice to De Palma’s over-the-top classic or King’s sparse, tense original novel, leading horror fans to speculate on just who would be right for the movie’s many iconic roles were a remake to come about in 2021.
Carrie
The role of Carrie is an infamously challenging part to play, not least because relative newcomer Sissy Spacek brought such strange, ethereal energy to the original film’s version of the title character. Fresh from an iconic debut in Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Spacek imbued the title character with a haunting innocence that blew Chloe Grace Moretz’s more conventional version of the awkward bullied teen out of the water. Rather than trying to match Spacek’s unsettling Manson girl calm, a new Carrie should lean into the character’s pent-up aggression. Stranger Things star Sadie Sink would be perfect for a more proactive, angry take on the part.
Carrie’s social exclusion and constant mistreatment at the hands of her mother produced a hapless victim in the original movie, but Sink’s performance as rebellious runaway Max in Eli, playing (spoilers) the spawn of Satan as a cheeky, likable teen, so the combination of her most famous role’s teen angst and her more minor role’s dark side could prove a perfect fit for a reinterpretation of Carrie's antiheroine.
Margaret White
Carrie’s smothering, hyper-religious mother is an infamously difficult character to nail, with Julianne Moore’s remake version paling in comparison to Piper Laurie’s iconic original take on the role. Laurie’s cartoonish version of the character earned her a well-deserved Oscar nod, but the actor famously succeeded in the part because she insisted that the story was a comedy and should be played as one. Hush star Kate Siegel, most recently seen in The Haunting of Bly Manor and its predecessor The Haunting of Hill House, has the right combination of tongue-in-cheek overacting and horror genre experience to pull off the part, and this sort of villainous leading role would be perfect for the erstwhile Lady in the Lake.
Sue Snell
The angelic high schooler Sue Snell is a somewhat thankless role, given that all the character gets to do in both screen versions of Carrie is reach out to the class weirdo and end up with a dead baby daddy as thanks. However, former Nickelodeon star Bree Bassinger has proven via the title role in Stargirl that she is up to the task of mining some complexity out of a character who at first glance seems to be nothing more than a thinly-written teen do-gooder, so the actor would be a fine fit for the part previously played by Amy Irving and Gabriella Wilde.
Chris
The scene-stealing villain of Carrie (she even gets the musical's best song), Chris is possibly the most repugnant high schooler to ever grace movie screens. An amoral monster in the body of an unassuming snotty teenager, Chris is the catalyst who spitefully ruins the movie’s prom and thus prompts Carrie’s kill-em-all rampage at the close of the story (she’s also fully culpable for the manslaughter of Tommy Ross, something adaptations rarely lean into).
Originally played by De Palma muse Nancy Allen and later by Fantasy Island star Portia Doubleday, Chris is one of Carrie’s most memorably nasty figures and effectively the primary antagonist of the movie. In both screen iterations, she’s a memorable villain and one who could be played perfectly by The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s Kiernan Shipka. Since her role as Don's troubled daughter on Mad Men, Shipka has imbued seemingly sweet characters with a sense of depth and darkness. She would be an ideal choice for Chris, with the role giving Shipka a chance to drop the subtlety and finally play an unrepentantly nasty full-blown villain (albeit one who is skilled at seeming sweet when necessary).
Ms. Collins
Truly the most thankless role in the main cast, Ms. Collins is the ill-fated teacher who attempts to reach out to Carrie and help the kid make it through the hell of high school, only to end up as collateral damage during her climactic rampage. A rare character who was portrayed more effectively in her remake iteration by the always-stellar Judy Greer, the role should go to How I Met Your Mother’s breakout star Cristin Milioti, who has the perfect combination of earnest sweetness and knowing humor to make it all the more brutal when her character gets wiped out despite her best attempts.
Tommy Ross
Tommy “The Boss” Ross was, in the original adaptation, the king of lacrosse. The dreamboat has been played by Big Wednesday’s affable lead William Katt and a miscast Ansel Elgort in 2013’s re-do, but who would best embody his small-town charms nowadays? Netflix hit’s 4 seasons that he has the right mix of affable, easy charm, and hidden depth to nail the role, and he’d be an ideal addition to a modern Carrie cast as a result.
Billy Nolan
It’s never easy to take on the role of a Stephen King villain since this means competing with iconic onscreen baddies ranging from Bill Skarsgaard’s multi-dimensional spider clown monster IT to the very human and deeply terrifying Annie Wilkes of Misery infamy. However, John Travolta’s original iteration of high school bad boy Billy Nolan hit the perfect balance between a campy, after-school-special bully and a genuinely frightening young sociopath. It’s not an easy part to pull off, as proven by Chronicle’s Alex Russell who played Billy as a believable but forgettable villain in 2013’s remake.
However, one young actor who has proven himself more than up to the challenge is the breakout star of 2016’s indie horror Better Watch Out, Levi Miller. The former child star is best known for the flop Pan, but Miller’s superb work as the psychotic lead in the little-seen blackly comic thriller Better Watch Out proves he would be a perfect fit for the unstable character, and casting a younger actor in the role would make the revelation of his depravity far more effective than hiring another twenty-something to play one of Carrie's supposed high schoolers.
