We're in a fantastic era, possibly the best yet, for Stephen King adaptations. The Outsider, the Mr. Mercedes series, The Long Walk, and both recent IT adaptations and IT - Welcome to Derry alone are exemplary adaptations of incredible quality. It's only fitting that Carrie, his first novel and arguably the best film adaptation he's yet received, is part of this tremendous wave. With Mike Flanagan behind it, Amazon Prime Video's Carrie series stands up to that high mark.
Mike Flanagan is perhaps our best current interpreter of King's oeuvre between the excellent Gerald's Game, the life-affirming The Life of Chuck, and the positively stellar Doctor Sleep, based on the sequel novel to The Shining. Flanagan has shown a knack for finding the human core inside these horror worlds without losing true terror, a recipe for brilliance that fueled The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass to all-time-great status.
The series is an excellent adaptation that expands the world of King's first novel in ways that are consistent with his other works. It's tense, beautifully shot, and Summer H. Howell has excellent range, playing Carrie with likable innocence and menacing power with equal skill. It's a stellar adaptation, finding new layers in a time-honored work.
Strong Character Work Adds New Layers To A Well-Known Tale
In Carrie, the death of the father of Carrie White (Summer H. Howell) triggers a host of complications in the young teen's life. Homeschooled for her entire life thus far, she has to enter the chaos of high school for the first time... much to the dismay of her stern, abusive Christian mother, Margaret (Samantha Sloyan).
Carrie struggles to fit in, bullied by disaffected mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton) while also making friends with the bright, popular teen Sue Snell (Siena Agudong). And then there's the matter of Carrie's increasingly powerful telekinesis...
Flanagan's series is very clear in developing both Carrie and her mother in greater depth than we’ve seen before. Howell's Carrie is a beacon of naïve positivity who desperately wants to fit in, and doesn’t thrive in the oppressive environment she grew up in. Flanagan writes the character with just enough innocence to build a deep empathy for the character's plight without making her increasing worldliness and devastating powers unbelievable.
It’s an excellent performance and a solid script that expands on King’s material well. The supporting players also do a great job of building complex characters that are otherwise easy to interpret as one note, but which escape that fate here without being watered down.
Margaret White is one of King's most menacing human villains, given her abusive behavior towards a daughter in complex need, but Samantha Sloyan gives her subtleties that carry the character to evolved heights. She’s an abusive, paranoid woman still, but he allows us to better understand her fears and trauma.
And Alison Thornton is also excellent as teen bully Chris Hargensen, who isn’t absolved for making Carrie's life hell, but we're allowed to see the pressures shaping her for a more complex narrative.
Mike Flanagan Finds Smart Ways To Expand This World
Flanagan‘s additions suggest strongly that there’s so much to this world we haven’t seen before, and his desire for a three-season series is more reasonable given all the places a future season can clearly go. The series expands the world considerably, introducing us to other characters with mental powers as well as humans that seek to either control or oppose them. Outside his bestiary of incredible monsters, powerful humans who Shine are some of King's most exciting creations, and it’s nice to see this early-career novel fit into the wider world in original ways.
Carrie isn’t exactly suffering for its choice to expand the world, and it opens up a lot of promising material for future projects. Expanding the story over eight episodes does occasionally feel like a bit of a stretch, however, as certain moments seem too slow or repetitive in service to the expanded runtime.
Some characters also simultaneously remain under-explored. Sue Snell receives ample runtime and does evolve, but a greater sense of her interiority would be nice. It would also be beneficial to have a greater window into Carrie's father, since her warm memories of him fit oddly against Margaret's abuses.
Altogether, Mike Flanagan's approach to Carrie gives it a fresh shine for the modern era. Summer Howell is exceptional as the telekinetic fish-out-of-water, providing relatable innocence alongside skilled intensity when the tale requires it.
Samantha Sloyan and Alison Thornton capably add layers that (alongside great scripts) keep easily reductive characters from being one-note villains, and Flanagan expands the world in fascinating directions. It's another clear winner in his oeuvre.
Final Rating: 8/10
Carrie hits Amazon Prime Video on October 7, 2026.
