In Defense of Flanagan’s Carrie

BY: DAVEY

Mike Flanagan’s Carrie hit Prime Video on October 7, and I loved it. It’s the best Carrie adaptation we’ve ever gotten. It’s also my least favorite of Flanagan’s shows, which says more about how high he set the bar with Hill House and Midnight Mass than anything wrong with this one.

The biggest criticism has been that the show isn’t scary enough. Flanagan told us ahead of time that this would be different from his other work and from every other Carrie, so I went in expecting a coming-of-age tragedy instead of another Hill House. I love my horror as dark and tragic as it gets, and this one is lighter than I’d usually pick, but that’s my own taste, and the show knows exactly what it wants to be.

People are also saying Carrie is too nice. I was bullied as a kid, and I saw myself in her. Summer H. Howell plays Carrie as a good person who was handed a power she never asked for and doesn’t understand, and that gave her more depth for me. Some people only seem comfortable with a powerful woman when she’s easy to label as evil, and the complaints that Howell is “too pretty” to play Carrie are plain misogyny. Her performance was my favorite part of the series, with Matthew Lillard a close second as Principal Grayle. I’ve been a Lillard fan my whole life, and it was a treat to see him do things I’ve never seen him do before. I’m also always happy to see Kate Siegel show up in anything.

The modern update works, too. The bullying through the “Carrie Red” Instagram page fits naturally into the story without hitting you over the head the way the 2013 version did. I especially loved that the show openly connects Carrie’s power to the shine, which no Carrie adaptation has done before. We already know the shine runs in families, so learning that Margaret has it too, and has likely spent her life suppressing it through religion, makes total sense. Watching her hold up the roof at the end was a fun twist.

I would have happily taken less of Emaline and the superhero turn at the end, though I understand why Flanagan needed her for the bigger backstory he’s building. Some critics also felt the prom was rushed. We’ve all seen that prom play out plenty of times by now, and I appreciated that the show didn’t drag it out. My favorite moment of the whole series is Carrie crushing the car on Chris right in the middle of her saying “I’m sorry.”

The ending is where people are angriest, because Carrie survives. She has died in nearly every adaptation of this story (the 2002 TV movie is the forgotten exception), and with so much real tragedy in the world right now, it felt satisfying to watch her make it out alive. For once, let the woman with power walk away.

Carrie is streaming now on Prime Video, and it deserves a lot more love than it’s getting.

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