My decade-long project of reading Stephen King has thus far taken me through Pet Sematary, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Gunslinger, and his novellas, but not yet Carrie. Frankly, I don’t know if I have it in me to read about the bullying of a teenage girl. Call it triggering or whatever, but I feel deeply—in an almost psychic empath way—the embarrassment of a young person suffering at the pleasure of their peers.
From all I’ve gleaned about Carrie via osmosis (the first time on a random episode of The Nanny), it sounds like Chinese water torture. But as a fan of Mike Flanagan, it was just too easy to press “play” on Carrie, his latest TV show and his first for Prime Video. Yet another live-action adaptation of King’s king-making 1974 novel, the series retells the book’s story (as much as I can gather, anyway) with all the appropriate touches of modernity.
Yes, there’s a social media angle. And yes, the fanaticism that sheltered Carrie White (played by a cherubic, dainty Summer H. Howell) is rooted in doomsday isolationism and right-wing panic against the secular tyranny of state-sanctioned education.
There is also a tastefully harrowing sequence mired in the grim normalcy of shooter drills, which even the authority figures have about as much faith in its effectiveness as “duck and cover.” But Flanagan pulls off a tiny miracle in his Carrie. It is more than a splash of fresh paint on a vintage ride. Carrie is again an alarmingly real story about the horrors of growing up, splayed across eight enthralling episodes of YA horror.
It is a show with perspective: even the best of us will sacrifice parts of ourselves to fit in, and even sincerity has ulterior motives. While I’m vaguely aware the book portrayed Carrie differently than Flanagan—I’m told she was a judgy zealot, and a walking buzzkill—I don’t think the changes are so egregious. Sure, it follows a conventional path, of ravaged naivety and justified wrath, but that story just makes sense.
It isn’t a faux pas to be legible. Just as it was in 1974, Carrie in 2026 is about a bullied girl who exacts revenge on her ruthless classmates using her supernatural powers. Brian De Palma basically nailed it fifty years ago with his immortal adaptation, so much so that most other attempts have been pallid.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
