Carrie review: Mike Flanagan takes Stephen King to school
Mike Flanagan turns Stephen King’s Carrie into an eight-episode Prime Video series for the social-media age. Is a third trip to the prom worth it? Here’s my verdict.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 26 October 2026
Contents
Some stories you assume have been finished off for good. Carrie White has had the pig’s blood, the prom and the fire twice already: first in Brian De Palma’s 1976 film, which scarred a generation of us who watched it on a dodgy VHS at someone’s house, then in the 2013 remake nobody asked for. Now she’s back for a third go, stretched over eight episodes, on Prime Video.
Before you groan, look at the name on it. This is a Mike Flanagan series, and Flanagan is the one man in television who has made a habit of taking Stephen King seriously and coming out with something that holds up. That buys him my patience. Mostly.
Premiere2026-10-07
GenreMystery, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
CastSummer H. Howell, Samantha Sloyan, Siena Agudong, Alison Thornton
Created byMike Flanagan
Seasons2 seasons · 8 episodes
ChannelPrime Video
Rated15
Watch onPrime Video
83%
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Same girl, nastier school
The new Carrie moves the furniture around. Her father dies suddenly, and his death drops her into the unforgiving world of a public high school. The cruelty she meets there goes beyond the locker room: a bullying scandal goes viral and tears through the whole community. All the while, as she goes through adolescence, she starts to discover telekinetic powers she doesn’t understand.
It’s a smart update, and frankly an obvious one. King’s 1974 novel was about a teenager humiliated in front of her peers. In 2026 that humiliation doesn’t end when the bell goes. It follows her home, sits in her pocket and gets shared thousands of times before teatime. The show leans hard on the casual cruelty of the social-media age, and that gives an old story a fresh, uncomfortable edge. I’ll stay spoiler-free beyond the set-up. You already know roughly where a story called Carrie is heading. The interest is in how Flanagan gets there.
Flanagan’s repertory company reports for duty
Flanagan created the series. His record speaks for itself: The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, The Fall of the House of Usher, plus two King adaptations, Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. He is fond of long monologues, slow-burning dread and grief as a horror engine, and the death of a parent at the centre of this premise is very much his territory.
Summer H. Howell leads the cast. Alongside her are Siena Agudong, Alison Thornton, Joel Oulette and Josie Totah, and, inevitably, Samantha Sloyan. Anyone who watched Midnight Mass will remember Sloyan as one of the most quietly infuriating characters on recent television. A Flanagan show without her would feel like a Mike Leigh film without Timothy Spall.
The horror of Carrie was never the telekinesis. It was the laughter, and these days the laughter comes with a share button.
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What works, and what might test you
The big gamble is length. De Palma did the whole thing in about an hour and a half, and the slow, sickening build to the prom is a large part of why it still works. Eight episodes gives Flanagan room to do what he does best: give the supporting characters an inner life, let the bullies be more than cardboard cut-outs, and make Carrie’s grief as important as her powers. That’s a real improvement on the 2013 version, which felt like a carbon copy with better special effects and Chloë Grace Moretz doing her best with a script that had nothing new to say.
The risk is the obvious one. You can only delay a story everybody already knows the ending of for so long. Flanagan’s talky, reflective style is either a feature or a bug depending on your patience on a Tuesday night. The social-media angle could also tip into a lecture if it isn’t handled lightly. Middle-aged men telling teenagers their phones are bad for them is not a genre that needs more entries, and I say that as one.
The comparison with the 1976 film is unavoidable, and it’s unfair to everyone. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie both got Oscar nominations, and that split screen is a piece of cinema history. The sensible approach is to treat this as a different animal: less a shock to the system, more a long, sad character study with a fuse burning down.
What the critics say
The series arrives this autumn, and at the time of writing the major critics’ verdicts and aggregate scores were still to settle. The early interest is all about whether Flanagan can do for Carrie what he did for The Haunting of Hill House, which kept almost nothing of the book except its soul and was much better for it. I’ll be watching the Guardian and Empire verdicts with interest, as I suspect they’ll split on exactly the question of length.
Where and when to watch in the UK
Carrie premieres on Prime Video in the UK on 7 October 2026, with eight episodes listed. It’s included with an Amazon Prime subscription, so no extra rental fee, though you’ll still have to sit through whatever the ad tier throws at you. It carries a UK rating of 15, so it isn’t one for the younger teenagers in the house, however much they insist it’s about them.
Verdict
This is the most thoughtful version of Carrie we’ve had since 1976. Flanagan understands that the story was always about grief, shame and loneliness, with the fireworks as the payoff rather than the point. It isn’t flawless, and eight hours is a lot of build-up for a climax you can see coming from the trailer. I’d recommend it to anyone who loved Midnight Mass or The Haunting of Hill House and fancies a slow-burning Sunday night binge with the lights off. If you want your horror quick and nasty, stick to rewatching the De Palma original on a dark night instead.
Ashley Isaacs picks what's worth your evening – film, TV, streaming, music and books for men 45 and over with limited evenings and too many subscriptions. Reviews of what's new on Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and the rest, crime dramas worth a weekend, and classics worth a second look. What's worth watching, what isn't, and where to find it in the UK.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to ashley@midcent.uk.
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