‘Carrie’ Review: Mike Flanagan Gives Stephen King’s Classic a Bloody Modern Makeover

There are certain stories Hollywood refuses to leave alone, and Carrie is definitely one of them. Stephen King’s bullied telekinetic teenager has already made it to the screen multiple times, so another adaptation immediately comes with one very important question: Do we really need another Carrie?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes.

Mike Flanagan’s Carrie understands that simply recreating the story audiences already know would be pointless. Instead, this version brings Carrie White into the modern world, where high school cruelty doesn’t stop when the final bell rings. Phones, social media and the possibility of humiliation going viral make Carrie’s isolation feel painfully suited for today’s audience, giving a familiar story a fresh reason to exist.

Summer H. Howell steps into the title role as Carrie, a sheltered teenager whose life with her deeply religious mother, Margaret, has left her completely unprepared for the world outside their home. Once Carrie enters public high school, things go exactly about as well as you would expect if you know anything about this story. The bullying begins, Carrie’s mysterious telekinetic abilities start revealing themselves, and we start moving toward a destination longtime fans already know is going to get very, very bloody.

Howell is one of the biggest reasons this version works. There has to be vulnerability underneath Carrie’s eventual power for the character to land, and Howell makes it easy to understand just how badly Carrie wants something most teenagers take for granted: the chance to simply fit in. Even when you know where this story is headed, there is still that little part of you hoping maybe this time things will somehow turn out differently.

Samantha Sloyan also makes Margaret White appropriately unsettling without turning her into a cartoon villain. The relationship between Carrie and her mother remains one of the most disturbing pieces of the story because so much of Carrie’s fear, shame and confusion starts inside her own home. Their scenes together carry an uncomfortable tension that works especially well in the longer television format.

That extra time is both the series’ biggest advantage and occasionally its biggest problem. Expanding Carrie into eight episodes gives Flanagan room to develop characters who previously existed mostly around Carrie’s story. We get more time inside the school, more context for the teenagers surrounding Carrie and a better sense of how seemingly small acts of cruelty can build into something much bigger. This version wants us to understand the environment that creates the tragedy instead of simply racing toward the infamous prom.

But there are moments when Carrie feels like it is taking the scenic route to a destination we already know. The series can be slow in spots, particularly when the story is stretching material that previous adaptations were able to move through much faster. Not every character beat needs quite as much breathing room as it gets, and there are portions where you may find yourself wondering when things are going to pick up again. Flanagan loves a slow burn, and for the most part that works here, but occasionally the burn could use a little more fire.

Thankfully, the slower moments never completely derail the series because there is enough character work and atmosphere to keep things interesting. The modern updates are also handled better than they easily could have been. Updating an older story with social media can sometimes feel like somebody awkwardly dropped TikTok into a script just to remind us what year it is. Carrie largely avoids that problem because technology actually strengthens the central theme. Teenage cruelty has always been at the center of this story; now the bullies simply have more ways to make sure their cruelty reaches an audience.

And that might be the smartest choice this adaptation makes. The basic story of Carrie has not suddenly become outdated. If anything, the idea of a teenager being humiliated, isolated and publicly torn apart feels even more frightening in an era where one video can spread through an entire school before lunch.

Flanagan doesn’t erase what made Stephen King’s story iconic. The pieces audiences expect are still here, but this version gives them a different context and enough new material to keep the series from feeling like an eight-hour remake of something we have already watched.

Is every one of those eight hours necessary? Probably not. The pacing could be tighter, and there are definitely stretches where Carrie takes longer than necessary to make its point.

Still, I enjoyed this version quite a bit. It feels contemporary without forgetting what Carrie is supposed to be, Howell gives us a protagonist worth investing in, and the extended runtime allows the tragedy surrounding Carrie White to become more complicated than a simple story about the bullied girl who finally snaps. We already know Carrie White’s story. Mike Flanagan found a reason to tell it again.

Carrie premieres October 7 on Prime Video.