Mike Flanagan's "Carrie" brings a refreshing take on Stephen King's iconic novel. Fuelled by great performances from Summer H. Howell and Samantha Sloyan, it is tender, unsettling, and one of the best shows you'll see this year.
Carrie White is naïve and in need of someone to explain the world to her, after being homeschooled all her life and isolated from the public by her mother. Her knowledge of the world stems from an abundance of novels she reads in hiding. Not many can relate to or understand her situation. When she gets her first period, her immediate reaction is to cry for help as if she has been stabbed with a lethal weapon. When a school bully lures her into a false friendship, she is blindsided by the manipulation and, worse, the cruelty. Carrie might have a lot of things to learn about her society, but she is a victim of our worst instincts nonetheless.
Previous screen versions of "Carrie", including Brian De Palma's 1976 film and the 2013 remake, leaned so heavily on the horrors of hate and bullying that Carrie's inner life took a back seat to the thrills the genre demands. This is the main reason Mike Flanagan's adaptation, for which he serves as showrunner, feels essential.
Expanding Carrie White's character and how she sees the world is integral to elevating the coming of age side of King's story. The series understands that Carrie (Summer H. Howell) is a fish out of water, someone full of curiosity and wonder. Perhaps the biggest difference in this reimagining is that it is lighter than its predecessors. Carrie's mother, Margaret (Samantha Sloyan), locks her daughter away out of genuine protectiveness instead of contempt. Carrie's bullies in her first year at school are given ample backstory, showing how the cycle of violence from home can carry over anywhere.
Told across eight episodes, "Carrie" brings the story we all know into the age of social media and misinformation. The stakes are higher, as bullying can happen anywhere online. Putting Carrie White in the present makes her situation more suffocating, as online hate can be inescapable.
There is so much to unravel in "Carrie" that I cannot reveal, as it connects to significant plot threads later in the series. It is fair to say, though, that Mike Flanagan and his team did remarkable work in transforming this familiar story into a refreshing commentary on kindness and the lack of it.
The series goes to places that are unimaginable, yet they feel intimate and deeply personal because everything stems from Carrie White's need to belong in a world she's slowly discovering. Summer H. Howell translates this very well in her performance. Cast through a wide search, she delivers a breakout turn filled with impeccable youthful innocence and, when needed, hellish rage.
It helps that she has Flanagan's frequent collaborator, Samantha Sloyan, playing her mother, Margaret White. Sloyan is equally impressive as her screen partner, moulding the mother we have always hated into one of the most sympathetic characters in the show.
It is unreal how "Carrie" works when it could easily have fallen into so many traps. This speaks to great writing that respects its characters. While the series can feel stretched at times to fill its episodes, it makes up for it with great characterisation from its stacked ensemble. I believe this is the ideal version of King's novel, even surpassing Brian De Palma's 1976 classic, as it satisfyingly fills the gaps needed to tell the story of its title character while also being a tender and relevant story of coming of age.
Between Mike Flanagan's and Brian De Palma's "Carrie," the great thing about having two fantastic visions of this story is how they complement each other and speak true to their respective generations' angst and woes.
The full first season of “Carrie” premieres on Prime Video on October 7, 2026.
Featured images from Prime Video.
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