As a somewhat hardcore Stephen King fan (I haven't yet tackled the entire Dark Tower, but grew up reading all of the other books), I will continue passing on films that are not directed by either Frank Darabont or Rob Reiner. Even in King's own hands, the stories and characters he's created simply fall flat and lose most of their quality when transferred onto the big or small screen. Maybe some of his later, more-cartoonish stories (i.e. Under the Dome) would work better (I haven't seen the TV version of that either), but I wouldn't hold out much hope for the stronger stories from the first few decades of his career.
I've not seen the first Carrie film, but I can't imagine that any movie could do the book justice. A lot of what makes the novel work is King's interesting presentation of the story - a sort of scrap-book approach that incorporates newspaper clippings, excerpts from books, transcripts of interview footage with the Sue character, etc... (I might be mistaken...haven't read it in a while). Despite the fact that some of that could definitely translate well on-screen, the whole of it would require the movie to be a lot less slam-bang than modern studios (and audiences) are willing to tolerate.
So, yeah, I'll not be seeing this one. Perhaps I'll read the book again instead. It's short enough to tackle in one afternoon and well worth revisiting once every few years, along with those dark and messed-up Richard Bachman books he wrote around the same part of his career (i.e. Rage, the horrid step-sibling to Carrie that King pulled from shelves after the rash of school-shootings in the 1990s; not a bad book at all).
