Carrie 2026 Review: Mike Flanagan’s Slow-Burn Stephen King Remake

Mike Flanagan strips Stephen King’s Carrie down to its core and rebuilds it as a less terrifying, more melodramatic storyline.

The new Carrie series takes Stephen King‘s 1974 debut novel and strips it back to its core. After the sudden death of her father, Carrie White (Summer H. Howell) is placed in a public high school for the first time.

There she faces the cruelty of teenage life and the changes of growing up, while her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan), who believes the world is flawed and corrupt, tries to keep her sheltered from all of it.

Mike Flanagan takes on yet another King adaptation after Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck.

He has also created some of Netflix’s strongest horror series, including The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher.

With that track record, Carrie suits his style of horror- the slow burner with extended dialogue emphasizing more on psychological horror.

Rather than retell the novel beat for beat, the series focuses its tension on the damage bullying and social media can do to impressionable minds.

This shapes the two central characters. Carrie and her rival Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton) are alike in many ways, but their family lives set them on different paths.

The series gives Chris far more depth and context than the novel did, using her to show how isolation affects teens on both sides of the traumatic scale.

A broken home and the loss of a parent lead to different outcomes. Carrie slowly climbs out of her isolation, with optimism and hope while Chris loses her identity, her power and her support system, and that builds her rage towards Carrie.

Margaret is the other major change. In the novel she is a religious fanatic who sees sin everywhere and fears it will corrupt her innocent daughter.

Here she is a conspiracy theorist who believes the government is corrupt and out to control everyone. It’s another creative freedom that lets Flanagan retell the story through modern social anxieties.

The ideas are strong, but the delivery is uneven. The storyline drags to fill eight episodes, a runtime that four could have covered comfortably.

Flanagan’s signature extended dialogue usually builds atmosphere, but here it loosens the connection between the audience and the characters

The ensemble drives the narrative, drawing the audience into scenes of conflict. The young cast does its best with the script.

They take scenes the story has been told through many times before and bring real emotional truth to them, making them as compelling as the originals.

Summer H. Howell, Siena Agudong (Sue Snell) and Alison Thornton show range and chemistry in those scenes.

Even when Chris is written as a victim, which takes away from the story’s darker side for dramatic effect, Alison Thornton still brings the character’s cruelty to the screen, turning the audience against Chris rather than asking for sympathy. The scene where the conflict peaks conveys this perfectly.

Carrie steps in as a mediator between the audience and Chris, almost begging us to forgive her. But Chris, with nothing but her expressions, plays with both Carrie and the audience’s emotions.

She makes it easy to hate not just the character but the woman playing her. The audience feels every bit of that fury, making it a powerful immersive experience.

Despite its flaws and weak writing, Carrie makes for a great watch. The changes still capture the essence of King’s novel.

It tackles the horrors of family dynamics in a less scary, slower-burning and more emotionally enriched form.