Mike Flanagan is known as a prolific TV horror auteur, but there’s always been a YA novelist lurking within his scary instincts. It came out most clearly in “The Midnight Club,” his 2022 series about a hospice facility for young adults (not to be confused with “Midnight Mass,” his first-rate 2021 series that brought supernatural terror to a New England island years before “Widow’s Bay”). And it emerges again in “Carrie,” his new adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel about a bullied Maine teen who unleashes telekinetic hell on her classmates, streaming now on Prime Video.
One could argue that King’s book, still among his best, was itself a particularly gruesome YA novel, at least in the way that it cut to the quick of teen anxiety and cruelty. But King, an executive producer on the new series, didn’t have lush pop tunes with plaintive female vocals to play with. Nor did he write “Carrie” in the age of social media, a bullying and harassment accelerant in this series and others, including “Adolescence” and “Cape Fear.” Hell hath no fury like a spiteful, spoiled teen girl with an Instagram account. Actually, hell does have such a fury. And her name is Carrie White.
She’s played here by Summer H. Howell as a demure wisp of a girl, thrust into the wilds of public high school after her father dies in a construction accident and her mother (Flanagan regular Samantha Sloyan) can no longer stay at home to homeschool her. A social misfit used to being sent to a prayer closet by her mom to consider her sins, Carrie is red meat for the mean girls at school, led by Alison Thornton’s Chris Hargensen, who’s deeply unhappy with her home life and ready to do damage with an anonymous IG handle.
Except she doesn’t just target Carrie; she goes after the whole school, students and faculty alike, with a barrage of cruel and, it must be said, pretty creative memes. Flanagan, who also made the King adaptations “The Life of Chuck,” “Doctor Sleep,” and “Gerald’s Game,” has turned “Carrie” into a sharp-fanged cyberbullying cautionary tale. This approach is certainly relevant to the day and age, but it also dilutes the directness of King’s focus on an ugly duckling pushed past her limits (captured with brute force in Brian De Palma’s 1976 borderline-exploitation movie adaptation, starring Sissy Spacek).
The most chilling and resonant character here is Sloyan’s fierce mama bear. Created by King (and played by Piper Laurie in the movie) as a fundamentalist fanatic, Margaret White is updated here as a Moms for Liberty type, fuming at the permissive values taught in public school and the world at large. She holds particular scorn for the flustered, let’s-all-get-along school principal (Matthew Lillard), who, to Margaret’s suspicious eyes, might as well be a Deep State agent. You can tell she’d love to ban some books. Margaret gets in trouble at the big box store where she works for refusing to sell sex-related merchandise, then uses lies and innuendo to smear the manager who bars her from checkout line duty. Sloyan was also superb as a prim, proper, angry viper in “Midnight Mass,” but her “Carrie” version feels more timely, cutting, and, yes, scary.
The series itself feels timely, and even a little nutritional, which isn’t always a good thing. We’re given history lessons, with voice-over narration, about telekinesis and women deemed trouble by the authorities over the years. The dangers of social media get a thorough workout. By the time Carrie fully embraces her vengeful side, in a fiery, apocalyptic climax, you might feel like you’ve sat through a particularly horrific civics lecture. Lesson No. 1: Don’t mess with the girl who can create infernos with her mind.
CARRIE
Starring Summer H. Howell, Samantha Sloyan, Alison Thornton, Siena Agudong, Matthew Lillard, Joel Oulette, Josie Totah, Arthur Conti, Amber Midthunder, and Tim Bagley. All episodes streaming on Prime Video.
Chris Vognar can be reached at chris.vognar@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram at @chrisvognar and on Bluesky at chrisvognar.bsky.social.
