Stephen King’s debut novel regains a sobering timeliness rich with Mike Flanagan’s signature compassionate terror
When it comes to Carrie, Mike Flanagan knows the first thing on our minds is…“Why?”
It’s a question that’s dogged many of his adaptations when first unveiled, from his streaming breakout The Haunting of Hill House to his final Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher. Now, as he embarks on his first project in a new partnership with Amazon Prime, the specter of skepticism returns with his eagerly-awaited take on King’s ill-fated, oft-revisited telekinetic prom queen–Flanagan’s version makes this the most-adapted King story alongside Children of the Corn.
But just like Carrie herself, it isn’t long before Flanagan reveals just what heart-wrenching, hilarious, and horrifying power he’s eager to wield over this story.
Playing off of our familiarity with King’s source material, Flanagan opens not with Carrie, but in her wake–as the ruined residents of small-town Chamberlain sort through their recollections of what devastation was wrought that tragic prom night for the latest ambulance-chasing docuseries. Immediately, Carrie’s split through so many perspectives: to some, she’s a victim turned hero–to others, nothing but an inevitable monster waiting to happen. But across Carrie’s debut two episodes, this provocative and timely adaptation makes the case that, regardless of her destructive psychic powers, there’s very little separating anyone from being or becoming Carrie White.
The accidental death of conspiracy-minded construction worker Ralph White exposes his deepest secret: behind the barred doors and bubble-wrapped windows of his suburban home, his widow Margaret (Samantha Sloyan) and their teenage daughter Carrie (Summer H. Howell), live like anonymous fugitives from society. With Ralph gone, Margaret’s sheltered, God-fearing world for her daughter can no longer hold, and the two are forced to assimilate into a society neither is prepared for. For Margaret, it’s a waking nightmare; for Carrie, after a lifetime of captivity, it’s a chance to finally spread her wings.
Nobody–even Carrie White–is born a monster. And despite the efforts of those who seek to control them, even more resist being shaped into one. In a sharp break from her previous incarnations, this Carrie refuses to shy away from the world. Given her first real exposure to it, Carrie instead embraces its entirety with infectious curiosity. She devours books behind her mother’s back; she types out a goofy, eager “hello!” when using her first computer; and, importantly, she steadfastly believes she can befriend anyone on her first day–because she earnestly wants to listen to everyone. From her excited first breath, Summer H. Howell’s Carrie is her Carrie, a stellar performance defined wholeheartedly by her irresistible empathy and joy.
Howell keenly emphasizes how Carrie’s sheltered, semi-militant upbringing has instilled in her a resilient resourcefulness key to surviving the highs and lows of life at home and high school. It’s equally tempered with a naïveté central to the tragic arc of King’s tale, as Carrie’s exposed to modern life both great and terrible. Her tackling everything with such unabashed sincerity risks coming across as cringe, but often lands with piercing insight for those who haven’t lived under lock and key their whole lives. Howell’s graceful guidance of Carrie through these moments down a path of inevitable destruction makes her paradoxically, magnetically heartbreaking and uplifting to watch.
Over the course of Carrie, her joy is championed and condemned by a world trying to make equal sense of her. Flanagan’s snapshot of high school life is as much Elephant or Big Little Lies as it is his Breakfast Club: the raw, vivifying energy of these beautifully monstrous and confused teenagers thrives in contrast to the drab, fluorescent-lit halls they wander, resisting an institutionalized soullessness that’s already infected the teachers tasked with keeping the tenuous peace. Carrie catches the attention of Siena Agudong’s ambitious senior Sue Snell, eager to guide Carrie however she can through the treachery of high school cliquedom. Such instant friendship, though, puts her at odds with Sue’s fading bestie, the charmingly poisonous Queen Bee Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton). Like Carrie, the world Chris knew is imploding–her once-clear path to college alongside Sue now derailed by her parents’ divorce, leaving Chris, and her future, an afterthought to a very messy present…and Carrie as an all-too-convenient outlet for Chris’ rage. Where other adaptations reduce these dynamics to petty popularity politics to provide a more direct focus on Carrie’s nascent powers, Flanagan takes full advantage of a TV series’ breathing room to explore the ways characters like Sue, Chris, and Carrie are cripplingly similar. The right or wrong glance or throwaway line leads these kids to either open up or wall off from one another through achingly relatable teenage insecurities–something only exacerbated by the fact these vulnerable moments can go viral thanks to stray smartphones. The compulsion to think we’re the first person who’s ever experienced first love or parental strife runs strong those formative years, and never quite fades away as we enter adulthood. Flanagan’s unwavering devotion to that emotional stubbornness is what makes his writing ring so true regardless of his characters’ ages or backgrounds, and what allows performers like Howell, Agudong, and Thornton to sear the hearts and minds of their audience.
When it comes to the adults, Carrie immediately gravitates to homeroom/gym teacher Ms. Desjardin (Amber Midthunder) and guidance counselor Mr. Morton (Tim Bagley), who–alongside fellow teacher Mr. Peist (Rahul Kohli)–form their own band of professional misfits at Ewen High, spending post-school drinks fascinated or flummoxed by Carrie’s unfiltered earnestness. Like their principal (Matthew Lillard, perpetually at the end of his graying tether), Desjardin and Morton are just doing their best to get through the day in thankless jobs made even harder by navigating parents’ demands as much as students’. But some of Flanagan’s best moments–in these two episodes, and arguably his career–are in how Carrie reawakens the passion they once had for guiding kids to more mature, fulfilling lives, and how they reciprocate that renewed purpose by fiercely defending Carrie’s curiosity and empathy.
In full candor, one particular sequence in Episode 2 is so empowering and nurturing that I couldn’t help but be left wrecked. It’s a sincere outreach to kids like Carrie who might struggle with who or where to turn to in their darkest moments–and even adults ranging from Mr. Morton to Margaret White, who are still figuring that out themselves–that it’s OK to not know everything, to be scared of that, and to be excited about filling in those emotional and intellectual blind spots. That the sequence involves a school library—more often than not an ideological battleground fought over by those who wouldn’t otherwise be caught dead in one—speaks to just how prescient this Carrie is, and how seriously Flanagan takes the responsibility of modernizing King’s novel.
Which brings me to the performance Flanagan stans have likely looked forward to most since the project was announced: Samantha Sloyan as Margaret White. Beyond the reserved, memorably puritanical performances of predecessors Piper Laurie and Patricia Clarkson, Sloyan’s Margaret opens Carrie like a feral mother bear, barricading her daughter from invading strangers. It isn’t long before she takes such militant motherhood into both working life as the Kim Davis of the local supermarket checkout aisle and a fiercely combative relationship with Carrie’s teachers. Just as initially sheltered as Carrie but self-deluded into her own moral high ground, Sloyan makes it wickedly entertaining–and outright horrifying–just how surprised Margaret can be by her empowering new life on the outside. Like her iconic Bev in Midnight Mass, Sloyan is so adept at projecting her characters’ deepest flaws while keeping them self-oblivious that she keeps such a diabolical character like Margaret chillingly relatable no matter how extreme her views may be.
It’s the finest example of the even moral keel on which Flanagan places Carrie’s cast–not out of moral relativism, but asking us in true Flanagan fashion to see just how much each of these characters is capable of, and asking us to reckon with how far each of them chooses to go. He doesn’t shy away from the elliptical nature of the story, deeply underlining just how much he cares about the circumstances that led up to that fateful prom night, how much they could have been avoided, and the myriad minutiae of choices, good and bad, that snowballed into an iconic tragedy whose aftermath survivors are still sorting through.
There are many, many other surprises left in store in this reimagining of a well-trodden Stephen King story—but it’s safe to say you don’t know this Carrie (or this Carrie), and it’s such a damn rewarding time getting to do so.
Carrie premiered its first two episodes at Fantastic Fest 2026, with a series premiere coming October 7, 2026 exclusively on Amazon Prime.
