PLOT: A reimagining of Stephen King’s classic story about misfit teenager Carrie White (Summer H. Howell) and the violent, supernatural revenge she takes on her tormentors.
REVIEW: Mike Flanagan has become the most prolific adapter of Stephen King’s work since Mick Garris back in the nineties. But, as far as adapting his work goes, probably the one most fraught with landmines for someone like him is Carrie, which was already made into a pretty perfect film by Brian De Palma back in 1976. It was updated as a TV movie and later as a movie starring Chloë Grace Moretz in 2013, but both were met with scorn—if not outright ridicule. Surely Flanagan was biting off more than he could chew, especially by making it into an eight-episode series.
Yet, watching the first two episodes at TIFF, I couldn’t help but think that Flanagan has done a really good job reimagining the material for a new generation. While retaining enough of King’s story that it doesn’t come off as too much of a departure, the world has moved on in the fifty years since De Palma’s movie, giving Flanagan and his writers’ room a lot of new material to mine.
The series is framed by a bookend segment suggesting that a kind of streaming docuseries has been made about Carrie’s inevitable pyrotechnic meltdown, which, in the case of the series, not only involves her high school but also burns her entire community to the ground, leading to hundreds of deaths. Were such a thing to happen, it would surely become fodder for a true-crime series, but it’s not overdone either. In this version, Carrie and her deranged mother, Margaret (Samantha Sloyan), have been hidden for many years by Carrie’s father, who dies in the show’s opening sequence. Here, Margaret’s religious devotion, while still prominent, is given a bigger umbrella, with her being a doomsday prepper embedded in all manner of conspiracy theories—an extremist with a total distrust of mainstream society in any form. Carrie has been hidden her whole life, having never watched TV, used a computer, or even been allowed to read much—save for the books a kindly neighbour sneaks to her.
Summer H. Howell is terrific as Carrie. Less “weird” than Sissy Spacek’s classic take, Carrie is portrayed as sunny but also wholly naive to the world around her. Flanagan, who directs the first two episodes, does a good job evoking just how radical the world would seem to Carrie once she is put into the mainstream. As she walks into her high school, she sees open affection, same-sex couples, even trans kids—none of which she was ever exposed to before. She doesn’t look at them with any kind of judgment—she’s just surprised because she didn’t know they existed. Her lack of knowledge is so extreme that it leads to the famously traumatizing moment when she has her first period, which comes at the conclusion of episode one.
The show branches out to focus on a number of characters, with Siena Agudong as Sue Snell, a popular student who has sympathy for Carrie but also finds herself annoyed by how unwise to the world she is, with a school shooting drill becoming an early breaking point. But at least she’s not cruel, like Alison Thornton as Chris, who takes perverse delight in tormenting her to compensate for the lack of power she feels at home, with her formerly rich father going broke and her mom (Heather Graham) having started another family. Amber Midthunder is excellent as the girls’ homeroom teacher who, like Sue, tries to do her best for Carrie but finds herself exasperated by her. The only person in her life who truly looks at Carrie without judgment is Joel Oulette as the kindly Tommy Ross, Sue’s jock boyfriend.
While two episodes aren’t enough to definitively state whether or not the series will work as a whole, it’s off to a great start. Flanagan’s repertory of actors, including Matthew Lillard, Rahul Kohli, and more, are all excellent, although outside of Howell, it’s his regular Samantha Sloyan who really shines as the domineering Margaret, who is less hysterical and more calculating than other versions of the character we’ve seen. Flanagan also gives the show a contemporary soundtrack that will likely help hook younger viewers, with it coming along at a great time as Amazon’s YA programming has blown up. Carrie could cross over to that audience as well as genre fans. I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes one of his biggest shows. Hopefully, the rest of the episodes are as consistently good as the first two, but I’m thinking this is another big winner for Flanagan.