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Timeless Horror Classic Gets a Stunning Modern Update

This is—and isn’t—the “Carrie” you remember.

Mike Flanagan has made a name for himself with a trio of Stephen King adaptations (Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck) as well as a collection of television miniseries (The Haunting of Hill House, The Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass) that, no matter their source material, are heavily indebted—in tone, structure, and style—to the master of horror.

Nonetheless, the acclaimed filmmaker sets the bar high with his latest stab at bringing the best-selling author’s work to the screen, given that Carrie has already received the classic treatment courtesy of Brian De Palma’s 1976 masterpiece.

An eight-part saga that updates the novel for the modern age while throwing in quite a few significant King-ian twists to its familiar formula, Flanagan’s show (Oct. 7, Prime Video) is at once faithful and radical, hewing to convention at the same time that it takes notable liberties with its characters and plot. It doesn’t necessarily improve on the author’s original (or De Palma’s gem), but it’s a worthy reinvention that carves out its own unique identity in fire and blood.

More than any other translation of King’s book, this Carrie has sympathy for its protagonist. Played with serious charisma by relative unknown Summer H. Howell, Carrie White is shy and socially clueless, yet also cute, chipper, and outgoing enough to seem like an ideal candidate, in the right hands, for a Pygmalion-style makeover.

She doesn’t receive that, of course, because her strangeness still alienates her from her classmates, most notably cruel Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), who views her as an oddball tailor-made for ridicule and torment, not to mention a possible threat to her friendship with kinder Sue Snell (Siena Agudong). Her failure to fit in is also the byproduct of her mother Margaret (perfectly cast Flanagan favorite Samantha Sloyan), who’s raising her in a zealously old-school Christian faith.

And then, of course, there’s the telekinesis.

In the wake of their paterfamilias’ construction-site death, social services forces Margaret to get a menial job at an S-Mart and Carrie to attend high school. Those are considerable changes for the teenager and the matriarch, the latter of whom clings tightly to scripture and the wacko conspiracy theories espoused by her late spouse, and who’s fond of locking Carrie in their home’s “prayer closet.”

Margaret’s reclusive paranoia and doomer mania are smart contemporary updates. So too is Chris’ eventual use of social media to persecute Carrie, with Flanagan foregrounding online bullying as a means of heightening tensions to a surprisingly shrewd degree, such that Chris’ reign of Instagram terror eventually envelops the entire school, including its staffers.

As befitting an eight-episode series, Carrie expands its tale in numerous ways, whether it’s Margaret sparring with high school principal Henry Grayle (Scream alum Matthew Lillard), teacher Rita’s (Amber Midthunder) fledgling romance with colleague Seth (Rahul Kohli), Chris’ frustration at her parents’ divorce—which has left her in the care of her callous and financially strapped dad (Michael Trucco), and fuming at her mom (Heather Graham), who’s shacked up with her classmate’s father—or Carrie’s friendship with fellow outcast Emaline (Thalia Dudek).

Never feeling false, these additions amplify the overriding toxicity of Carrie’s insular home and high school worlds, and fortunately, they don’t stop the show from sticking to the path King set out, which is bound to lead to a prom night like no other.

Recognizing that there’s no reason to just rehash what’s already done before, Flanagan admirably takes big swings with Carrie, and many of them pay off, most notably with Margaret, whose batshit lunacy is complicated by her genuine affection for her daughter and the fact that her and Carrie’s experiences often confirm her criticisms of 21^st-century society. Far from merely a poisonous force, she’s a more complicated influence on Carrie, and such thorniness extends to Chris and the rest of the supporting players.

That said, Carrie’s three-dimensional portraits unintentionally neuter the show’s suspense and horror. The mounting dread and awe-inspiring malevolence of King’s tome are rarely present here, because Flanagan makes these characters almost too well-rounded. Carrie, in particular, is so sweet and lovable that when she finally snaps, her massacre comes across less as an unholy (and sad) cataclysm and more as a wholly justifiable response to Chris and company’s horridness.

To be fair, this makes Flanagan’s show a deliberately different beast, with a mildly alternative agenda, than the book. Nonetheless, a Carrie stripped of genuinely unhinged wickedness and madness is not, in the end, totally Carrie.

A framing narrative in which the bloodbath’s survivors are interviewed for what appears to be a true-crime documentary, and episode-introduction tidbits about historic supernatural women who were vilified by men as witches and demons, add some formal novelty to the proceedings.

More notable is a premiere bombshell that dramatically shakes things up. This tweak doesn’t improve upon the established story, but it’s certainly in tune with King’s fiction—if he’d written Carrie later in life, he might have done this himself—and it provides a welcome extra layer of intrigue to a nightmare that, without such alterations, would have simply been more of the unnecessary same.

Carrie’s overriding mystery also gives Flanagan the opportunity to extend this story into a second season. At first blush, that seems like a bridge too far. Yet the writer/director does such a compelling job creating engagement with Carrie and her unfair ordeal—and generating disgust at social media (and the culture that enables it) as much as right-wing psychosis—that the idea of seeing where he wants to take this tale remains enticing. As with so much of this do-over and its characters, the good and the bad are thornily entwined, for better and worse.

The rare adaptation that’s both needless and daringly reimagines rather than merely regurgitates, Carrie paints a picture of teen nastiness and misery that’s timeless and of-the-moment. It may not scare the way its most hallowed predecessors did, but it has a chill—amplified by its yearning for, and celebration of, kindness—that continues to gnaw at one’s nerves long after its infamous apocalypse is over.

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Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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