Mike Flanagan's Carrie Review: What Works and What Doesn't

I binge watched Mike Flanagan's new Carrie series on Amazon Prime Video, and I think he stays true to the heart of what made Stephen King's story so strong in the first place. I have my issues with the larger mythology the show sets up, but I really enjoyed it.

I think most people's first question about a new Carrie adaptation is whether we really need another one. Honestly, the answer will probably almost always be no. But we live in a time when studios would rather capitalize on established IP than take a chance on something new. In a world with something like seven Batmans and five Spider-Mans, I think there's room to revisit familiar stories or even reimagine them, as long as they stay true to what made them work. I think Flanagan does exactly that with Carrie. Spoilers for the whole series follow.

Carrie White's story moves into the age of social media

The series follows Carrie White, a sheltered young girl who has spent most of her life inside because of her religious and controlling mother, Margaret. After the death of her father, Ralph, Carrie enters her nearby public high school. It's her first time in school, and she struggles hard to navigate teenage social rules and customs. She quickly becomes a target for bullying from Chris, the Regina George of this school. The series modernizes the original story by bringing social media into play, showing how teenage cruelty can be subtle and is usually geared toward online humiliation.

As Carrie adjusts to school, her telekinetic powers grow stronger. Objects move around her and her emotions trigger supernatural events. The series eventually reveals that Margaret also has telekinetic abilities, though hers are much weaker than Carrie's. The people around Carrie are given a lot more to do. Chris starts out subtly mean, but the series explores her insecurities and emotional neglect, while her boyfriend, Billy Nolan, encourages her cruelty. Sue's relationship with Carrie is much more complicated, and the adults at the school struggle to protect Carrie before the situation becomes unmanageable.

One of the biggest departures from the original is the introduction of other people with supernatural abilities. Carrie meets a mysterious girl who at first seems almost imaginary, but who eventually reveals she has been spying on Carrie as part of a larger mission. She can project herself astrally, and she's connected to a group of supernatural women, including Adelaide, who is documenting the aftermath of the events in Chamberlain, and Amanda, who is trying to call people with these powers. The series uses the term the shine, connecting Carrie's abilities to the wider mythology of Stephen King's universe, as in The Shining and Doctor Sleep. Carrie is no longer an isolated incident but potentially part of a much larger world of gifted people and secret organizations. I don't like this part as much, and I'll get to why below.

Prom night ends with Carrie surviving and leaving Chamberlain

Carrie attends prom with Tommy Ross, and for a small moment she experiences something close to normal teenage happiness. She dances with Tommy and the two are crowned prom king and queen. Then Chris and Billy ruin it by dumping pig's blood on Carrie in front of everyone. As the students laugh and record her, Carrie becomes overwhelmed and unleashes a blast that shorts out their phones, shooting glass into the teens' faces and triggering a series of ruthless deaths. Carrie uses her powers against Chris and brings down the catwalk, but it strikes Tommy and kills him. The principal is struck by falling debris, which leads to the fire breaking out.

At this point the mysterious girl offers to take control of Carrie's body, and Carrie lets her. Some of the deaths are caused by Carrie's actions and others are accidental, but most are done by the other girl. Chris and Billy escape in Billy's car and run into Carrie standing in the road. Billy tries to run her down, but Chris grabs the wheel at the last moment and the car crashes into a ravine. Both survive but are trapped, and as Carrie approaches, Chris finally begins to apologize. Her last minute remorse can't undo the damage, and Carrie crushes the car, killing both of them. Carrie then dances through the burning town along Maine Street.

Back home, Margaret comforts her while Carrie tries to process what happened, but Margaret ultimately tries to kill her during prayer. The struggle turns violent and the house collapses. Then the story takes another major turn: Carrie survives. The mysterious girl finds her and takes her away from Chamberlain, giving Carrie something other adaptations couldn't, a possibility of a future beyond the massacre. Margaret also survives the collapse at first, using her own powers to escape, but once Adelaide and the organization get involved, Margaret is eventually killed as they cover up what happened. These women aren't straightforward heroes, and their true motives are unclear this season. Sue survives and gives her account to Adelaide, who has been posing as a journalist or documentarian all along.

Flanagan understands Carrie is about fear, not just revenge

I think Mike Flanagan is incredibly well versed in Stephen King's work. He has already adapted Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck, and with projects like The Dark Tower and The Mist in development, it's clear this was written to expand on a bigger King world. He also understands that adapting King is about figuring out what made the story resonate with people in the first place and translating that into something that speaks to the world we live in today.

We've seen him do this with The Fall of the House of Usher, which takes from Edgar Allan Poe's stories without replicating them, recontextualizing the ideas through a modern lens. That's where I think he really cooks with Carrie. He understands the story isn't simply about a girl who develops weird powers and takes revenge on her bullies. It's about what happens when a young person is denied the freedom to understand herself, and when the adults responsible for protecting her instead teach her to exist in fear.

The teenagers feel real, and this Carrie starts out hopeful

One of my favorite things about this adaptation is how it portrays teenagers. They feel like actual teenagers, not over the top high school bullies we know we're supposed to hate. The way they talk to one another, their social dynamics, their desperation to fit in and their need for validation all feel grounded. Because of that, we really feel for Carrie in this zoo, and we anticipate every moment that's going to make things harder for her. The second they mentioned a school shooting drill, we knew exactly how badly that was going to go for her.

I also really like that this Carrie isn't immediately a Debbie Downer. In every adaptation we meet Carrie as a scared little mouse, but this is the first version who seems genuinely excited to step into the world. The show has more time than the 70s film ever could, so while we always felt bad for Carrie, this version shows her optimism slowly being chipped away by the people around her. We feel her heartbreak and the need to protect her in real time.

The Instagram angle makes complete sense to me

Technology taking a front seat is something I didn't imagine, but I really like it because it makes complete sense. The bullying we saw in the 70s would be cyberbullying today, and since social media is literally a web, online drama will always snowball and affect more people than just the one you hope it will. Someone did try to help Carrie in the original, but more often than not people turned a blind eye, just as they do in the series. Here, though, they aren't just hearing about or witnessing the damage. They're kind of engaging in it too.

I've seen some critics frown on how heavily the story leans into social media and the paranoia it creates, arguing the show uses it to excuse other characters' actions. I'd say there's nuance here. On a smaller scale, social media really is that serious, and if you're not a teenager, you might just not get it. I'm a woman in my 30s, just as I was when I saw Netflix's Adolescence. I can recognize the anxiety social media creates for young people, but I'm not one of them. I do remember how much I sought validation and how much the fear of being judged by my peers guided my decisions, and I can only imagine navigating that with the internet we have today.

There are a million ways the social media angle could have been played out stupidly or made too corny, but I think making it specifically Instagram, and only Instagram, was great. I think adults simply don't know the parameters that teenagers do on this topic.

Chris and Carrie mirror each other

I really like how the series juxtaposes Carrie's trauma with Chris's emotional neglect from her parents and everyone around her. These girls are very different, and I don't think the show is saying their experiences are equal or that we should understand why Chris does what she does. Chris's pain doesn't make her cruelty any less cruel, just as Carrie's suffering doesn't put every decision she makes beyond criticism.

Still, I think there's a fun mirror between them that often gets overlooked. Both of their environments are ultimately their undoing. Carrie is discovering her powers while Chris is losing her own and turning to social media to replace it. Social media is nothing like telekinesis, but it holds so much power in today's world and in the series, and as both girls grow into their respective powers, they begin to feel invincible. Flanagan has said there are no monsters in this Carrie, and I think that's because he wants us to see both sides of everyone's story, not just Carrie's. I think he's exploring the idea that hurt people hurt people, and we even see Carrie do that at times.

Flanagan made me root for Margaret White

Flanagan did a fabulous job with Margaret. We're used to seeing her as an absolutely terrifying, religiously fanatical mother whose abuse is extreme. She's still abusive here, but this Margaret believes she's actually protecting her daughter. I think Carrie's mom could never tell protecting her child apart from destroying her, but this Margaret is willing to do whatever it takes to protect her daughter.

That takes shape as a conservative parental activist who immediately uses right wing influencer tactics, which, yes, is bad. But in this context, is she wrong? I'm just saying. Mike Flanagan is the only person who can make me root for Carrie's mom.

Episode 7 hints at the mysterious girl's past

I also like the hidden plotlines, like the mysterious girl's, which is set up at the beginning of episode 7 with the mother who couldn't take care of her gifted daughter. Adelaide tells the story of a single mom and daughter in Iowa in 2015, and how it always begins at home: when you discover your child is gifted, you don't know what to do with them, even though you're supposed to love them.

Putting two and two together, I assume the mother tried to kill her. Then Adelaide enrolled her in this academy for gifted girls, much like she's trying to do with Carrie, something bad came out of it, and now the girl is against the school while her mother hunts these gifted people. That's at least my working theory, which I assume will be explored in future seasons.

The signs about Brooklyn and her teacher were always there

Another subplot I didn't like, though I did like the reveal, involves Brooklyn and a teacher. It weaves through the series and eventually becomes connective tissue for everything. Chris is struggling with her parents' secret divorce, her father's growing financial problems and her mother moving in with her boyfriend, who happens to be another student's dad. With both parents emotionally neglecting her, Chris acts out in increasingly mean ways, sometimes at the expense of her soon to be stepsister, Brooklyn. But Brooklyn was struggling with something of her own: their teacher had been sleeping with her. For the record, this is sexual assault. This is rape. And the reveal isn't just for shock value. It shows everyone is affected by what's happening.

I made a list of every time I noticed the signs. When Carrie attends class, Brooklyn is in the back talking with the teacher, who is reading Macbeth. He defends Brooklyn when Chris yells at her, but I don't see him defend Carrie. Billy calls him a pedophile at the bar, and at the end of that episode he mentions being stood up for a date, meaning Brooklyn, who had to stay for a family dinner with Chris. In episode 4, he and Brooklyn speak intimately, and toward the end of that episode, when Miss D goes to his house and tells him he's on the Instagram page too, he says it's just another rumor that happened at his last school and you have to let it run its course. That sounds like someone hiding something.

In episode 5, a bartender refuses to serve him over the rumors, and later Brooklyn is secretly on the phone with him. In episode 6, as he reels from constant harassment, Miss D unknowingly reminds him the truth will come out and everything will eventually be okay, which, not for this guy. I chose not to see the signs until they were blatantly in my face because I was too focused on whether people would find out Chris was behind the Instagram page. I think that opens up a pretty great meta conversation about how something so serious can be happening in someone else's life while we're too busy focusing on the drama.

My favorite scene is Carrie and the counselor bonding over books

My favorite moment in the entire series is much quieter: the scene where Carrie and the school counselor connect through books. It gives Carrie something she's been missing, a good adult who actually listens and offers her a way to understand what she's going through. Books give her a language for feelings she hasn't been allowed to share, let her recognize that others have felt pain and loneliness like hers, and show her she isn't the only person trying to make sense of a world that can be so cruel. For that moment, she shares something with another person without being mocked or punished.

In an interview with Collider, Flanagan spoke about the counselor as someone Carrie could grow up to become, someone who has experienced cruelty and bullying, survived it, and still chooses compassion. There's also a scene early on where two gay men are attacked, and I will never be over it. I was so happy the counselor got away and didn't attend the prom. I know he had to resign, but I'd rather him resign than end up dead. Do not kill the gay man. I'll also say the gay man and the Black girl were the best people in Carrie's life.

Every episode is directed by a woman

The diversity in the show is great. Newcomers to the Flanagan family Amber Midthunder and Joel Oulette are Indigenous actors, and I'm always happy to see people get roles and stories that don't center on the pain associated with their history. I love seeing Black folks in things, and I share that same joy when I see other folks on screen too.

To close out my argument for why I like the series: every episode is directed by a woman. Flanagan mentioned in the Collider interview that Carrie has been adapted too many times by middle aged white men and it was time for a change. I think that's why there's so much feminine joy in watching her dance through Maine Street covered in blood. The directors do a phenomenal job capturing female rage and power, and I think having so many women bring Carrie to life is really important for a story that's about so much more than a teenage girl with telekinetic powers getting revenge.

The X-Men style subplot didn't work for me

I'll keep the negatives light because I do like this show. I don't like the X-Men subplot. I understand why they're going in this direction, and since everything will eventually work around that same mythology, I get it. But for my own bias, it would have been nice to see Flanagan do a Carrie miniseries and call it quits. I always stick by never writing like you're getting another movie or season. I don't mind a cliffhanger, but one that establishes an entirely new construct feels written to benefit the larger picture, especially since that subplot doesn't really matter through episodes 2 to 7. It distracts from the Carrie of it all.

Cutting it would unfortunately pull the mysterious girl away. I thought the character was kind of a hat on a hat for Carrie's torment, though giving Carrie someone to help her conquer small fears was a nice touch. But I think Carrie could have done that on her own. She was written to be excited to jump into the world, learned quickly it's not so nice, and adjusted while being hurt. If hurt people do hurt people, I don't think it takes another girl to get her there. Most, if not all, of my criticism comes from knowing this will be part of a bigger universe and that Amazon wants a second season, because the additions just weren't needed. I also might simply not be the audience, which is okay. Some people are excited for a second season, and I'm happy for them, though I might not be tuning in.

My verdict: a Carrie adaptation with something to say

I really enjoyed this series. I think Flanagan understands what makes Carrie such a compelling story, and the strongest parts are the moments that remind us Carrie was never just a girl with telekinetic powers. She was a young girl who wanted to experience the world, make friends and figure out who she was, and the people around her failed her so many times in so many ways. The series does a great job of making us feel that.

My issues with the larger mythology don't erase what I think Flanagan gets right about Carrie herself. I'd rather see an adaptation take big swings and give us something worth talking about than recreate the original scene for scene. Do we need another Carrie? Of course not. But if we're going to keep revisiting these stories, I want them to have something to say, and this one absolutely does.

Are you ready for a second season of Carrie?