SINGAPORE — In today’s age of inexcusable cyber-bullying and a hyper social media, Stephen King’s classic horror novel Carrie feels like the perfect scare ’em straight cautionary tale message to anyone heartless enough to torment the school outcast. But to replicate Brian De Palma’s brilliant 1976 silver screen version — one of the most impressive film adaptations of a Stephen King horror novel alongside The Shining and Misery — would be an insurmountable task. Especially when King’s powerful story was told through De Palma’s deft hand and the Oscar nominated performances of Sissy Spacek as the titular doomed teenager and Piper Laurie as her mother. Comparisons will be unfortunately be inevitable.

This new adaption by Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce tries hard but compared to the lean, multi-layered scare factor of De Palma’s version, it unfortunately stands less inspired and accomplished. Given a modern day lick of paint, King’s tale of a timid teenaged outsider (Chloe Grace Moretz) with telekinetic powers, who uses them to strike back against the abuse of high-school bullies and her religious fanatic mom Margaret (Julianne Moore) now features mobile phones and a vicious case of cyber-bullying. Save for minor updates, 2013 Carrie decidedly travels the predictable line, hitting all the expected notes conscientiously and respectfully, paying homage to the De Palma’s original. But something feels markedly missing, and fans of the original will spend the entire movie looking for it.

Though clearly technically superior to the De Palma original, the new Carrie ups the violence but delivers the shocks by rote. Thankfully, the always reliable Moore gives a performance just this side of crazy and delivers with her usual skin-crawling perfection. Bona fide young actress-to-watch Moretz makes an impressive enough Carrie for this generation, though never quite at the level of the scarily good Spacek, whose spot-on performance will forever loom in the background at the mention of the name. But even with the twosome’s impressive acting — and the timely and socially important commentary on cyberbullying — by the time we get to that pivotal prom queen scene, you realise you’re not quite as stunned or horrified as you should and ought to be.

(99 mins, NC16)