Although Mike Flanagan’s upcoming Stephen King adaptation was already exciting enough on its own, the news that the Prime Video horror miniseries will fix one of the iconic author’s oldest mistakes makes it even better. Even though shows like Under the Dome and movies like The Running Man prove that Stephen King is an underrated author of sci-fi, there can be no debate over which genre the writer is best known for. King is a horror icon and has been since his 1974 debut novel became an instant bestseller upon its original release.
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Adapted into a hit movie by director Brian De Palma in 1976, Carrie told the simple, sad, but satisfying story of the titular bullied teen. A sweet but sheltered girl with an abusive religious zealot for a mother, the eponymous Carrie was viciously bullied by her classmates until eventually she snapped at the prom with disastrous consequences for her tormentors. While this plot is a lot of fun in the book and de Palma’s movie, it is hardly King’s most complex story, so it is exciting to see Mike Flanagan’s upcoming Carrie miniseries expand the scope of the original tale.
Mike Flanagan’s Carrie Rewrite Makes Perfect Sense
In the novel, 1976’s De Palma movie, and 2013’s remake from Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce, Carrie’s chief bully Chris is a straightforward pantomime villain with no depth. The remake even leans into this by making her an outright cartoonish caricature played by an actress, Portia Doubleday, who is almost a decade older than Carrie’s actress Chloe Grace Moretz. In every version of the story, this makes Carrie’s vengeance satisfying, but it also means the story never feels believable, realistic, or relatable.
In contrast, the first teaser trailer for Flanagan’s upcoming Carrie miniseries immediately hits viewers with Carrie’s most understandable question. The teen’s narration asks why Chris chose to bully her and why she did this so relentlessly, with Carrie noting that they could have been friends at the end of the haunting teaser. The miniseries has a way longer runtime, meaning it has more time to flesh out Chris’s motivations. Furthermore, Flanagan’s TV work has won acclaim precisely because of his ability to build believable backstories for otherwise simplistic villains.
From The Haunting of Bly Manor to his sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, Flanagan rarely traffics in the sort of simplistic, one-dimensional villains found in Carrie. Most of the writer/director’s horror output, which is heavily influenced by King, instead searches for the tragic humanity in its even its worst characters. Some of his shows, like The Haunting Of Hill House, even manage the impressive feat of telling a truly terrifying story without any truly unambiguous villains.
Mike Flanagan’s Carrie Show Can Fix Stephen King’s Iconic Story
The book and the De Palma movie are fun revenge stories, but they are just that; straightforward, one-dimensional plots. As such, Flanagan’s show can be the first version of King’s endlessly re-readable book that feels genuinely grounded and thoughtful in its exploration of teens, coming of age, school, bullying, religion, and small-town community.
Now more than ever, a portrait of ignorant bigotry that tries to sincerely engage with its root causes is a compelling, fresh new way to approach Carrie’s story. As fun as it has historically been to see the title character of Carrie lay waste to her enemies, Mike Flanagan’s upcoming Prime Video show is right to ask why Stephen King’s heroine was a target for so much abuse in the first place.
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