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Carrie Review
IGN / VideoElephant
Stephen King’s horror classic Carrie has been tried and tested over the years.
From Brian De Palma’s 1976 film, in which Sissy Spacek portrays a “withdrawn and sensitive” Carrie, to Katt Shea’s 1999 sequel, set 23 years later and starring Emily Bergl as Carrie’s sister, and finally Kimberly Peirce’s 2013 remake, led by Chloë Grace Moretz, each adaptation has offered its own interpretation of the iconic character.
Here's what to know about the new series.
What’s the new Carrie about?
For Stephen King, he says: “I couldn’t stop watching the show. It feels like it gets to the heart of teenage misery (and occasional bright shafts of joy)”.Liane Hentscher/ Prime
If you’ve yet to see any of the iterations, the story revolves around high‑schooler Carrie White, who has spent most of her life at home isolated from the outside world under the strict supervision of her "fiercely protective” and ultra-religious mother, Margaret.
Carrie, played by Summer H. Howell, loses her father to an unexpected death and is thrown into a whirlwind of teenage dilemmas after she’s forced to attend Ewen’s public high school. Soon after, Carrie finds herself at the centre of a vicious bullying scandal that floods social media and “tears through her community”. As she navigates adolescence amid “relentless pressures” and the “casual cruelty of the social‑media age”, her uncontrollable telekinetic powers are unleashed and put to the test by a mysterious set of characters.
Why is there another Carrie?
Based on Stephen King's 1974 novel, this new TV series aims to “do Carrie different”, says director and showrunner, Mike Flanagan.
He says, “Brian De Palma's film is an immortal classic and a near perfect adaptation of King's novel. There was no reason to do that again but I couldn't stop thinking about it”.
King and Flanagan have worked together before on Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck, while major TV shows including The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher also sit within Flanagan’s horror catalog.
Stephen King and Mike Flanagan attends the premiere of "The Life of Chuck" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.Mathew Tsang / Stringer / Getty
But it was the themes of “bullying” and “cruelty” in King’s writing, coupled with a new era in which children’s lives can be “enshrined digitally on the internet via social media”, that ultimately drew the pair towards working on a new Carrie, Flanagan says.
“Stephen King is… known around the globe for horror… but I don't think that's who he is”, shares Flanagan.
“At his core, Stephen King is an optimistic humanist, and even his most horrific stories are kind of wrapped around love and an unwavering belief in the potential of the human being.”
‘I don’t know what the f*ck I’m talking about’
“Oh, I captured it by admitting right away that I don't know what the f*ck I'm talking about when it comes to being a woman in the world”, says Flanagan.Prime Video
Alongside him, Kate Siegel and Kyra Sedgwick, are co-directors and writers on the show with each receiving one episode to truly make their own.
It’s a production team filled with “brilliant women”, from writers to directors, who “brought their lived experience and perspectives onto the show in order to make it authentic”, acknowledges Flanagan, particularly when it comes to the show’s depiction of the iconic menstruation scene.
“Oh, I captured it by admitting right away that I don't know what the f*** I'm talking about when it comes to being a woman in the world”, says Flanagan.
“One of the things I said from the beginning was I just feel like men have been telling this story for too long and really the only one who truly had a right to was Stephen King”, he adds.
Bringing a new Carrie to life
Summer H. Howell, 22, was chosen from “more than 1,400 actresses” in her role as Carrie as the team searched for someone who could bring something to the character that audiences hadn’t seen before.
“We were looking for someone who would bring this earnest curiosity and kindness to it. Summer… did all of that while never seeming to be naive”, says Flanagan.
H. Howell shares: “I just tried to pull from my feelings of wanting to get out into the world while I was in high school. So it's a little ironic.”
Samantha Sloyan, who plays Carrie’s mother, Margaret White says, “I don’t have children but from just being a daughter… the intimacy and how two people who are bound together and love each other so much can be so entirely different and have such different worldviews, I really brought [in] to it.”
When is Carrie released?
The eight-episode series, with each episode running for around an hour, has already received a 86 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, alongside 6.5 out of 10 on IMDb.
For Stephen King, he says: “I couldn’t stop watching the show. It feels like it gets to the heart of teenage misery (and occasional bright shafts of joy)”.
“The book and Brian De Palma’s film were about blood and horror; Flanagan’s version - a deep dive - is about the horror of social media. I loved it, and hope you will, too.”
All episodes of Carrie are available to steam from Wednesday, October 7, 2026, exclusively on Prime Video.
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