Flanagan's Carrie retells King for the social media age — SkimNews
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- Mike Flanagan created a new 8-hour TV series adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie, expanding the 98-minute 1976 De Palma film into a longer teen drama with horror elements, and there are "signs of seeds being sown for a second season."
- Summer H Howell plays Carrie as an open, curious teenager home-schooled and sheltered by her mother, forced into public school after her father is killed at work and his co-workers didn't know he had a family.
- Samantha Sloyan plays Margaret, Carrie's mother, portrayed as a mix of religious conservatism, conspiratorial thinking, and real love and fear for her daughter — described by the reviewer as a richer characterization than the film's religious zealot.
- The series opens with a high school gym fire and 200 deaths, with frantic 911 calls playing over scenes of the inferno before flashing back through survivor interviews to Carrie's origin story.
- The show's bullying sequences are filmed on mobile phones and spread online via a malicious "Gossip Girl-style" account, including the iconic shower scene, updating the story for an era of viral teen cruelty.
- Chris (Alison Thornton), the chief tormentor, is given "reasons — not excuses" for her growing savagery, while Sue (Siena Agudong) wrestles with her conscience from the start — a kinder treatment of the "baddies" that the reviewer links to the longer format.
- The reviewer concludes the show "doesn't have the raw power of the film" but offers "intelligence, wit and things to say about the fathomless potential for good and ill in the teenage heart."
Why it matters: By stretching Carrie to eight hours and recasting its bullying through mobile cameras and social media, Flanagan trades De Palma's 98-minute shock value for a character study whose standout turns by Howell and Sloyan give King's 1974 novel fresh relevance — but viewers expecting the original film's blood-soaked catharsis will find a kinder, slower show than the one they remember.
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