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When television’s go-to man for horror Mike Flanagan was approached about adapting Stephen King’s 1974 novel Carrie, his first reaction was no.
To him, it wasn’t a question of whether he could adapt Stephen King’s classic tale of high-school hell – over the years, Flanagan has adapted no fewer than three of King’s titles, and developed a close relationship with the writer – it was a question of whether he should, or rather why he should.
Since its publication 52 years ago, King’s debut about a telekinetic teen tormented by her peers and under the thumb of her religious fanatic of a mother has spawned an Oscar-nominated film, a Broadway flop, a network TV movie, a big-screen remake, and countless spin-offs and spoofs. “What more is there to say?” Flanagan thought. To be fair, it was the same question that was on the minds of thousands of horror fans who met the announcement of Flanagan’s new adaptation (he eventually said yes) with a cocked eyebrow – and more than a few hostile tweets.
For Flanagan, the answer to “why” came into focus as his son was getting ready to enter high school. “I had so much anxiety about the world that he was stepping into,” he says now. “It’s a completely different planet to when I was at school in the Nineties and the more I looked into the reality of what he was stepping into, the more I had to admit that I didn’t have a real basis for understanding his experience.”
What he came to realise was that the themes of Carrie had not dissipated over the years, but grown more relevant than ever – that the abuse and violence that’s always existed in schools had so clearly metastasised on the internet and on mobile phones. “There is something new and vital to say about being a teenager today and about the nature of cruelty and kindness,” he says.
Social media is at the forefront of his adaptation, which spirals out from King’s original story in several other significant ways – all approved by the author himself, who worked closely with Flanagan. New student and instant outcast Carrie (a beatific Summer H Howell) is the primary target of an anonymous and merciless Instagram account, but she’s not the only one. The account, run by the diabolical Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), fires in all directions at every student until the school is overrun with paranoia, fear and rage.
To gain some insight into your average American classroom in 2026, Flanagan invited a group of high-schoolers into the writer’s room. “We talked a lot about their day-to-day experiences and a lot of them got very personal about what tormenting and bullying looks like,” he says, “and the specific anxieties they have about the greater world they’re inheriting and how savvy they are as to what that world looks like, and what their limitations are. Also, how young they’ve had to accept the political and environmental mess that’s in front of them. I learnt so much from these young people, but I came away horrified… and impressed.”
“Kids are cruel” is a thought that crops up often while watching Carrie. “I think it’s simply because they haven’t lived long enough to see the consequences of that cruelty,” Flanagan offers up as an explanation. “High school is also where you make mistakes, and you’re trying to figure out who you are. I’m just so relieved that all of mine were private and confined to the school – and that was humiliating enough. The fact that these kids stare down a day where anything that happens to them can be broadcast for the world and maybe enshrined digitally forever. That’s horrifying.”
When the show announced that Howell, a slight and pretty 22-year-old, would be playing Carrie, alarms were sounded in corners of the internet where people argued that not only was this yet another unfaithful interpretation of King’s book, whose protagonist is described as pimply and “chunky” – but an example of the industry’s deep-seated fatphobia.
Like anything else, adaptation can be done with love, or it can be done cynically
“We were looking for the right actor for the role, and Summer Howell was cast solely for her performance,” says Flanagan now. “Also our Carrie is very different from the one in the book in every way. We’re also dealing with a character in our story who wasn’t tormented because of how she looked, and I think that’s why she’s described the way she is in the book. For us, we wanted something far more insidious and far more about who she was than what she looked like.”
It’s been the height of irony, he notes, “to see people make a judgment about Summer based on how she looks – and that to me is like, ‘Oh, they may need this show more than they think.’”
Carrie arrives at an interesting point in Flanagan’s life. He recalls watching the movie, the 1974 Brian de Palma version with Sissy Spacek, when he was just about to start high school himself. “I connected with it because I was a kid who was bullied. I was a strange kid. I was a bit of a misfit and so I felt a lot of kinship for Carrie.” Now, decades later, with his own son about to enter the jaws of high school, his kinship lies with Carrie’s mother, the formidable and frightening Margaret White, who is given more of a heart in this adaptation than in previous ones. “I too have this intense desire to keep my son safe and I don’t understand the world he’s going into,” says Flanagan, “and I can see how easily that very strong desire to protect can become oppressive or applied incorrectly.”
You might call Flanagan a master of adaptation; 10 out of his 15 film and television projects, including The Haunting of Hill House, have been based on existing material. How does he sit with the criticism around his industry’s over-reliance on existing IP? “Like anything else it can be done with love, or it can be done cynically – and I completely agree there are times when people are trying to wring every last penny from something and that makes us demand, rightfully so, where are the original stories?” he says. “But it’s so complicated – I’ve also seen the original stories be put up there and no one shows up to support them, whereas people come in droves to the familiar.”
For Flanagan, it always comes back to that key question of why this, why now. “For all the people who are like, ‘Why Carrie? Why? Why?’ I’m like, I’m with you. I was the first one to ask that. And now I have an answer – so go check it out.” Hopefully, you’ll find the answer there too.
‘Carrie’ is out now on Prime Video
