A Bad Night at the Prom

With this, the end of the first season of Mike Flanagan’s Carrie, we have a lot to talk about. I will give a heads up right now, before we even get into this review, that I will have a spoilers discussion for it up later, so we won’t get into any specifics now. But be aware that this season does diverge pretty heavily from Stephen KingRising to fame with the release of his first book, Carrie, Stephen King is one of the most prolific, and most successful, American authors (in any genre, not just horror).’s book in some key ways, so while my review may be fairly kind to the series, anyone looking for a more faithful adaptation of the book will probably be left wanting. But then, if you want that you still have the 1976 version of Carrie, which suits that need pretty well.

This newer version of Carrie is longer, slicker, and feels far more modern. It’s very clearly made as an attempt to update the book for the current generation, adding in a focus on internet culture, social apps, and school bullying over social media. It feels fairly prescient for this current world, and it sets aside the Afterschool Special vibes of the 1976 film (in large part because Afterschool Specials are now no longer a thing). In fact, just in general it does a far better job at making a modern take on the material than we’ve seen before, even from the 2013 version. If we take nothing else away from 2026’s Carrie it’s that this story really can work in a modern context and feel just as natural and real.

A lot of that comes down to a one-two punch of Mike Flanagan and Summer H. Howell. Flanagan served as director for all eight episodes of this mini-series (which may grow into a full series depending on what Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader. decides down the road), and his control can be felt in every frame. The production looks fantastic, making this world feel lived in and real without the heightened style that most other versions have tried for. It’s weird to discuss a film about a girl with telekinetic powers and call it “grounded”, but that’s kind of what this is. Outside of Carrie herself (and some stuff we’ll touch upon over in the spoilers discussion), the rest of this world feels real. Real people with real problems trying to get through their lives. Flanagan has crafted a world much like our own to populate this story.

And he has populated it with great characters. Part of the trick this series did (and this is a credit not just to showrunner Flanagan but his whole team of writers as well) is that they’ve added more to every character from the book, giving everyone, good or bad, nuance. It’s really hard to think of the characters in terms of “good” or “bad”, really, because everyone has flaws, everyone has wants and needs and desires. This whole story feels like it could happen anywhere (outside the girl with special powers) because of the effort put in by this production team.

This shows most clearly with the development given to Christine "Chris" Hargensen (Alison Thornton). In the movies that have come before, Chris is just a spiteful bitch who sees weakness in Carrie and decides to ruin Carrie’s life. There’s no real explanation for it beyond Chris is a mean girl and this is her project. But in this new adaptation, Chris is shown to be dealing with a lot. He parents are separated (even getting divorced), her dad is going bankrupt, and while she’s gotten into Duke, she now can’t afford to go (since she didn’t apply for financial aid the previous year). Her life, in short order, has completely fallen apart. So she makes a social media account on Instagram, carriered, to make fun of Carrie White and her first period (as we all know the story), and from that point forward she uses the account, and all the bullying it causes, as a way to control her life.

Yes, she’s still awful. The film doesn’t completely absolve her of her actions. It warns her, repeatedly, that running the account will cause issues, and even her best friend, Sue, tries to get her to take it down more than once. The consequences for her end up destroying her life further, all of which helps to illustrate why she goes after Carrie even harder. If she can’t control her life, she’ll do all she can to ruin Carrie’s. The development adds a lot to Chris without changing her into a different person. The extra time afforded her is good for the character even if she’s still the villain in the end.

And there’s a lot of this kind of development put into the story. In the previous versions. Margaret White has been a religious zealot who abuses her daughter as a way to control her own life. Here, though, while she is still a zealot in certain respects, you can feel a greater connection between her and Carrie. She doesn’t hate her daughter for the sin Carrie’s existence implies (i.e., that Maggie had sex). She is still stuck in her own world, though, and this leads her to ignore or put down her daughter’s needs in service of her own. It’s shading that makes Margaret into a more understandable character (instead of the cartoonish villain she’s been in the past) and that makes her more watchable. This trick is pulled again and again with every major player in the season.

But it’s Summer H. Howell who is the other major guiding force of the show. All that Flanagan and his team have done is great, but it wouldn’t work without the perfect lead at the center of it all. Howell gives us a version of Carrie we haven’t seen before, a girl who is bright and sunny and so eager to experience the world. She’s not beaten down by her mother or the other kids (in part because this version of the character hasn’t been to school before now) and is ready to see all that life has to offer in this new (for her) world.

Her Carrie also has fire within her. Because she’s not someone that has been beaten down, we can see so many facets to her. She has an edge she can bring out, a power within her that can equal the actual powers the story gives her. And she can really connect with people even though she’s brand new and doesn’t understand much of what’s going on around her. Howell makes her character someone you want to watch, someone you want to root for, even though you know what’s inevitably coming.

Except… not entirely. Without going into details, the series follows a similar path to the book (and other adaptations) for the first six episodes, but it’s in the seventh and eighth where things kind of go off the rails. Flanagan has spoken about how he has a three season plan for Carrie, assuming it gets picked up for future seasons, and in service of that the creator made some pretty massive changes to the finale of the story. Without spoiling anything here, the famous incident at Prom doesn’t play out exactly like you might expect, and this has implications for the series going forward.

And I think that’s where the season kind of loses me. Those changes feel more in service of turning Carrie into a long-running superhero story instead of maintaining the horror vibes the series is supposed to build towards. It feels like the creative team fell so in love with the Carrie they made that they didn’t want to let her go, so they had to twist the ending of the series up into knots to justify what they have planned next. In the process, though, they undercut the original story and took something from it that makes it feel less vital and powerful.

That sucks. I loved the first six episodes of this season. I was going to watch an episode a day and savor it so I could let the episodes marinate for me, but then once I was three seasons in I couldn’t wait. The episodes were so good I just had to keep going. I liked everything this season was doing… right up until I suddenly didn’t. The major changes the show makes in those last couple of episodes nearly ruin the whole vibe for me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ruins it for other people as well.

So that leaves me in a space where I don’t know if I can recommend this or not. For six episodes it’s probably the best adaptation of Carrie we’ve ever seen. It’s well made, well written, and does right by all its characters, whoever they are. It steps right up to the edge of greatness, but then in the last minutes completely fails to deliver. Maybe that wouldn’t ruin it for everyone, but for me, being right there and then somehow completely and utterly dropping the ball with changes to make the story continue past this first season somehow feels worse than if they would have just given us the pure and proper adaptation we could have had.

Carrie isn’t bad by any stretch. It is phenomenal for much of its run time. But a few bad decisions fail to deliver, and it brings the whole thing down in my book. I really wish that wasn’t the case because for six episodes I thought this show did the impossible: I thought it actually made me care about a version of Carrie.