Carrie White has never exactly had an easy time of it.
First published in 1974, Stephen King’s debut novel introduced us to the sheltered teenager with an overbearing mother, a merciless group of classmates and some rather formidable telekinetic powers. Just two years later came Brian De Palma’s now-iconic 1976 movie, with Sissy Spacek as Carrie and Piper Laurie as Margaret White, delivering some of horror cinema’s most unforgettable imagery and ensuring that school proms, buckets and the colour red would never feel quite the same again.
It’s a story that has been revisited several times since, which raises an obvious question: why Carrie, and why now?
It was a question that initially occurred to Mike Flanagan too.
The filmmaker behind The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, not to mention Stephen King adaptations Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck, is bringing Carrie to Prime Video as an eight-episode series. According to Flanagan, he wasn’t immediately convinced another adaptation was necessary.
“When Amazon first approached me, I wasn’t sure there was a reason to revisit this story,” he says. “I thought it had been adapted beautifully but there was something that wouldn’t leave me alone; it was really the amazing degree of relevance that so much of the story has in the modern world that Stephen and Brian De Palma couldn’t have contemplated 50 years ago.
“It felt like an opportunity to do something new in the universe that Stephen had created and explore versions of the character that never existed before. I wanted to do a unique adaptation, and I was thrilled when Stephen agreed, after showing him what I was thinking. I’m so glad it did stick with me because of all the projects I’ve been involved in, this has turned into one of my favorites.”
Rather than simply recreating King’s Seventies setting, Flanagan’s Carrie takes place firmly in the present day, shifting the pressures surrounding its heroine into a world of smartphones, social media and viral humiliation.
When we meet Carrie (Summer H. Howell), she has spent much of her life isolated at home with her fiercely protective mother Margaret (Samantha Sloyan). After the sudden death of her father, she finds herself thrust into public high school for the first time.
That means friendships, insecurities, cliques and casual cruelty. Except this is high school in the social media age, where humiliation doesn’t necessarily end when you leave the building. Meanwhile, Carrie is also beginning to discover that she can move things with her mind.
You know, standard teenage problems.
For Flanagan, setting the series now rather than treating King’s novel as a period piece was essential. “The themes we are exploring are relevant to today’s teenagers in such a profound way that wasn’t true when I was that age, much less when Stephen was, and just doing a period piece adaptation would have felt like re-reading,” Flanagan explains. “This wasn’t about nostalgia and doing something again, it was about telling a story that was vital to today; speaking to the unique experience of teens today, told through a new version of Stephen’s characters. Today, kids deal with a level of anxiety at school that I couldn’t have contemplated when I was growing up and the horror of being a teen today is so different from 1976, and this was a wonderful opportunity to explore that.”
Of course, bringing Carrie into the social media era is one thing. Finding a new Carrie White is quite another.
Howell came to the project without having read King’s novel or seen one of its previous adaptations, something that ultimately allowed her to approach this version of the character without another performance hanging over her. “I loved the way Carrie was written,” Howell enthuses. “That’s what drew me to the part. Mike and his team did such a great job with the scripts; they were captivating! I read all 8 episodes in a row and out loud to my half-listening family. I could picture myself as this version of Carrie and it really excited me.
“I hadn’t seen any previous movies or read the book and after getting the role I asked Mike if he wanted me to. He said “No!” We agreed it was best for me to focus on creating my own Carrie. I ended up watching the original film with him, the cast, and many Vancouver locals at the Rio Theatre after we wrapped the whole shoot! Oh, and I of course read the book shortly after.”
That fresh perspective feels particularly important because this isn’t a Carrie who arrives already beaten down by everything around her. Flanagan describes his Carrie as open, curious and initially untraumatised, allowing the audience to watch what happens as that optimism collides with the realities of modern teenage life.
“It was critical to all of us that our Carrie White was a character we hadn’t met before,” Flanagan says. “So often before, she was defined and introduced in a state of trauma and one of intense, clenched fear of being in the world. Our Carrie was the opposite; she was open to the world, earnest, curious and untraumatised; and then we let that heart experience the realities of modern teenagerhood.
“The long format, space and time that TV affords was one of the greatest and richest opportunities we have in a writers’ room for a project like this. Being able to explore the character in a way that the other adaptations, and even the source material, didn’t have the depth and real estate available to them to do, was one of the things that was appealing about this project.”
It’s an approach Howell was equally keen to embrace: “Showing Carrie’s curiosity and gratitude for the outside world was important to me. Her confusion in navigating school and trying to fit in is a universal experience for teenagers, but when she first arrives she is optimistic, genuinely kind, and not trying to be anything but herself. The rest of the season feels like she’s fighting to get back to that state while also learning to manage her telekinesis.”
The eight-episode format also gives the series considerably more time to explore the people surrounding Carrie. That includes familiar characters such as Sue Snell, Chris Hargensen, Tommy Ross and Billy Nolan, alongside a larger ensemble that includes Amber Midthunder, Matthew Lillard and Rahul Kohli.
But arguably the relationship horror fans will be watching most closely is the one between Carrie and Margaret White.
Sloyan is already well known to Flanagan fans thanks to Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club and The Fall of the House of Usher. However, when Flanagan first suggested Margaret, the actor admits she had some concerns about returning to the territory of religious fanaticism after her memorable turn as Bev Keane.
“As a tween who loved scary movies, I had of course seen the De Palma movie and loved it,” Sloyan remembers. “When Mike told me he was thinking of me for Margaret, I was honoured but also concerned it might be too like the character Beverly Keane I had played in Midnight Mass. Beverly was a fanatically religious, self righteous terror. Once I read his Carrie I understood that these were two very different characters. He was imagining a new Margaret, altogether.”
This new interpretation appears particularly interested in the love underlying Margaret’s actions rather than simply presenting her as the terrifying mother standing in Carrie’s way. That certainly doesn’t mean Margaret is suddenly going to win Mother of the Year, of course. This is still Carrie! But Sloyan sees fear rather than simple cruelty as the driving force behind the character.
“I believe that Margaret is anchored first and foremost in love for her daughter,” she says. “I think the tragedy comes from the fear that sparks. What’s more terrifying than harm coming to the thing you love most? I found that Margaret’s ferocity, what makes her dangerous, is her reaction to that fear. The lengths she is willing to go to protect her daughter.”
There’s another intriguing parallel between mother and daughter here too. Carrie hasn’t experienced the wider world before, but neither, in many respects, has Margaret.
After spending 15 years inside the home she considers a sanctuary, Margaret is being dragged into a world that has changed enormously around her. Where Carrie initially greets that new world with hope, Margaret sees danger everywhere.
For Howell, finding the love within that difficult relationship was equally important when working opposite Sloyan. “Filming with Samantha Sloyan felt like a dream,” she enthuses. “She is so down to earth, funny, and beyond talented. Even though our characters have an intense dynamic, it was important to us that they still love each other. While Carrie is trying to pull away a bit and learn through her own experiences, Margaret is trying her hardest to keep her daughter safe from the world, which leads to some extreme circumstances.
“Scenes with Sam felt easy. I often caught myself watching her act while we filmed her coverage. She is someone you learn from just by being in her presence.”
For horror fans who know their Carrie, there are obviously certain moments looming over any new adaptation. De Palma’s film has embedded them so deeply into horror culture that even people who haven’t watched it can probably recognise the imagery.
Flanagan’s longer format, though, gives the journey towards those moments a different shape. Rather than racing from one famous plot beat to the next, the series is interested in the accumulation of choices that gets everybody there: moments of compassion, moments of cowardice and moments where someone could perhaps have done something differently.
Sloyan puts it rather neatly: “You may know the story of Carrie White but in our series you find out how her story came to be. It might feel like an inescapable conclusion but we dive into all the seemingly small choices that are made, all the people who have to play their parts and all the opportunities that they have to turn fate in another direction. I hope our audience walks away with a feeling that we can choose in this life who we want to be, and the responsibility that comes with that. I also hope they have a bloody good time. Carrie White for Prom Queen!”
That idea of choice, particularly the choice between cruelty and kindness, seems to sit at the centre of this iteration. King’s novel might have been published more than 50 years ago, but teenagers certainly haven’t stopped being horrible to each other in the intervening decades. Technology has simply offered a few more efficient ways to do it.
“I feel like we live in a time where the question of empathy vs. cruelty has never been more relevant or more impactful when it comes to shaping the world that we live in,” Flanagan says. “I think we are wrestling with this globally and the fact that it’s a choice, that we must choose between empathy or cruelty and those decisions have sweeping and lasting generational consequences. We’ve positioned a story like this in the middle of a conversation that has never been more important as a parent and a citizen of the world. I hope people can see the demonstration of kindness in each other, and the tragedy that is inevitable if we don’t reach each other with empathy and kindness.
“We have a lot to learn from Carrie White, 50 years later, and I’m hoping people come away with this with a renewed interest in being kind.”
All eight episodes of Carrie premiere exclusively on Prime Video on 7 October 2026.
