Mike Flanagan and his team have delivered another banger. Usually expanding pulpy material to such length ends in disaster with pointless filler stretching the thrills to a tedious over-explained slog. This works as a companion piece to the 1976 adaptation. If you want to see it played fast and slick, watch that. With this, you get deeper into the psychology of High School hell, mean girls and social media turning teens into monsters. There’s also a more multi-faceted dynamic between Carrie White and her mom.
The only part that feels tacked on is the addition of others with special supernatural abilities. There’s some fine historical detail, and I like how that’s folded into the Carrie story, but the world of “others” is largely here to set up a 2nd Season I don’t need. It’s also impossible to top the original’s prom sequence, which is burned into my brain. This is fine, but subdued by comparison.
At this moment, Carrie is a standalone miniseries and an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. If it becomes a multi-season series, I would probably have to remove it from this list.
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