October is ramping up, and we have plenty of recommendations if you’re a fan of the genre. On TV, Carrie is on Prime Video, with Mike Flanagan taking the beloved Stephen King adaptation and introducing the worst prom ever to a new generation. There’s also Below, a Canadian thriller starring Josh Hartnett as a fisherman who must protect his community and family from a mysterious sea creature.
More friendly horror offerings include Netflix’s adult animated series Haunted Hotel, which follows a single mom who inherits a haunted hotel and must learn how to run it while also raising her kids and living with the ghost of her annoying brother. There’s also a new NCIS spin-off and Eternally Yours, a vampire comedy series. The Avatar we know and love is also back.
Avatar: Seven Havens takes us back to the Four Nations and introduces us to a new Avatar: a young girl named Pavi, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world that no longer respects the Avatar’s powers and influence. Carrie’s imprint looms large, whether we’re talking about the book, which launched Stephen King’s career, or the movies, which include Brian De Palma’s Academy Award-nominated turn, Kimberly Pierce’s lackluster adaptation, and a sequel that no one likes to think about. Flanagan makes Carrie his own, modernizing the text for the Gen-Z era, filling his school hallways with smartphones that magnify Carrie’s (Summer H.
While he largely sticks to the source material, Flanagan takes some notable detours and lends a sympathetic eye to some of the stories' most villainous characters, like Carrie’s radically religious mom Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan), and one of King’s most memorable bullies, Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton). Carrie, which arrives as an eight-episode binge next week on Prime Video, manages to walk that microscopic line between faithful adaptation and unique reinvention. Flanagan updates the story for our terrible 2020s to explore the modern high school experience where online bullying and school shooting drills are the norm, all told through the naive perspective of Carrie's wide eyes.
While the show drags at times on its way to the climactic ending we all know is coming, it's still a gripping story that Flanagan fans (and even some of his haters) will gleefully devour. It’s a good time to be an Avatar fan. After the release of Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, the world created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino is back with a new TV show, this time set hundreds of years into the future.
Avatar: Seven Havens follows Pavi, a young earthbender who discovers she’s the Avatar. Unlike Aang and Korra, though, who were considered the world’s saviours, the Avatar is linked to the destruction of the world, something that will surely complicate Pavi’s path. The next animated series in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe takes place approximately 225 years after the end of The Legend of Korra.
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