Welcome back, folks! This is Jim, borrowing Connor’s soapbox today to give you my thoughts on the most recent adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie. Regulars to the site might have seen me talk about other Stephen King related media in the past as I’m about as Constant a Reader as you’re likely to find. While I’ve been a little frustrated with the more recent additions to the King of Horror’s bibliography (Specifically Hollyand Never Flinch.) I’m always down for a good adaptation of one of his works! (Though, he does have a new book coming out in October that isn’t a Holly Gibney story but instead a return to the world of The Talisman and Black House and, by extension, The Dark Tower! Very excited for that.)
The original novel is one of the most influential works of its time, helping make horror more mainstream and less of a fringe genre as well as birthing a whole new generation of readers. Because of its universal theme of kindness versus cruelty, its gory and traumatizing action and its (At the time.) focus on very modern and contemporary feeling characters, it was extremely accessible and brought in a lot of folks who might not have picked up a book otherwise. This was at a time when the novel was considered a ‘dying’ art form, believe it or not. The rise of television and movies along with a boom in dramatized non-fiction were edging long-form fiction into a smaller and smaller section of the general entertainment market. Authors like Stephen King and novels like Carrie did a lot of heavy lifting in terms of lessening that perception of the dying novel and reversing the downward trend in readership for longer fiction. (Short fiction was doing just fine; in fact, Carrie was originally intended to be a short story submitted to the magazine Cavalier! Stranger still, King abandoned it after a few pages as it was getting too long and he wasn’t able to find his footing writing a young female POV character. His wife literally fished it out of the garbage and offered to help him finish it up because she really liked it.)
Mike Flanagan is our showrunner. No stranger to working on King adaptations, he was also the director of Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. Both are fantastic adaptations, too, so you’d be right to get your hopes up for this one.
So, all that said! Can this newest adaptation bring back that old school magic that made the source material shine so much?
We’ll be doing this one by the book, ranking elements of Story, Acting and Overall before offering a selection of final thoughts.
Story 8.5/10
This is a really great adaptation. It’s not completely faithful as it’s an entirely modern retelling as opposed to a 1970s period piece. (Pun not intended.) That means that, on top of the horrors Carrie has to deal with in this absolutely terrible high school, she also has to deal with the world of social media; every misstep she makes and every problem she has finds its way online and that makes it all so much worse. In this iteration, Carrie White has never attended any kind of school before, doesn’t know how to use technology and has been sheltered away from worldly elements to an incredible degree; prior to forming a fragmented and illicit friendship with a neighbor, she wasn’t even allowed to read books other than the christian bible. This makes it that much more difficult to watch the insane bullying she has to deal with – many scenes had me physically cringing in my seat out of sheer awkwardness and my sympathy for this poor kid.
Carrie is one of Stephen King’s shorter novels and as such, filling an eight episode miniseries with nothing but canonical material would be nigh impossible. As such we also have other characters brought to the fore. The Principal, teachers and guidance counselor of the school become characters in their own right with their own takes on things and story arcs, some of which become quite dark. These elements help set the scene in an interesting way and help make the work feel more contemporary. These poor teachers have no real way to keep students in-line and policing behavior becomes almost impossible at times, all with poor Carrie as the catalyst.
Her home life is a lot more detailed and nuanced in this adaptation as well, with Margaret White playing more of a role. I’ll talk more about her in the Acting section, but this take on the character is incredible. Forced to get a job, she starts work at a big box store of some kind and is just devious and wicked enough to make you hate her, but initially when she’s marching into the school to take on the principal and teachers over Carrie’s poor treatment at the hands of her bullies? I was completely on board! 100% team Margaret! It doesn’t last, though.
If you’re looking for a faithful, one to one, retelling of the 1974 novel, you’re not going to get that. This is a version for the social media age and it’s great. Every character is nuanced and morally gray with no really clear, pure heroes or villains; even Chris Hargensen isn’t the cardboard cut-out mean girl you see in some iterations. She is instead the epitome, the dictionary definition, of “people who are hurt, hurt people”. That’s not to justify her actions in any way, and it’s not to say her problems are the be-all end-all kind, but she has plenty of axes to grind and Carrie shows up at the right time to be that grindstone for her.
I do feel as though this miniseries is meant to be a Season One. Some characters and an organization are introduced that make me feel some serious The Institute vibes. I might be entirely wrong on that front but it was the overall impression I left with.
Acting 9/10
Summer H. Howell plays Carrie herself and she starts out as just the most precious kid. She’s wide eyed, innocent, quotes literature that she assumes everyone has read, talks unironically about the virtues of kindness and is just about as sweet as you could expect a person who’s really only ever lived inside one singular house to be. I felt so keenly for her in so many places and that wasn’t just due to the writing of the show but her performance as well. You just want to reach in and protect her from all these awful people!
Later in the story she turns all the above on its head and is legitimately terrifying as a force of nature, ripping through a prom full of students and then an entire town she’s set alight. (None of this is a spoiler, by the by – they lead with this in the first episode.)
Samantha Sloyan is Margaret White. You might remember her from such roles as Bev Keene from Midnight Mass! She was one of the bright spots from that show so, I guess ‘crazy religious lady’ is just a great fit for her acting skills! (Meant in an entirely complimentary sense.) As I said above, she does a masterful job, starting out as rough but at least somewhat sympathetic and just kind of devolving into a manipulative, cruel and self-serving monster.
One actor I really want to highlight is Tim Bagley. He’s been a favorite of mine since Monk! In that show he plays a rival to Tony Shaloub’s titular Adrian Monk and he’s one of my favorite recurring characters. He plays an entirely different sort of character here; guidance counselor Peter Morton is a gentle, compassionate and softly spoken character who does his best to shield and nurture Carrie in an environment that seems dead-set on preventing him from doing anything more substantial. He’s able to bond with her over literature and I really appreciated that. His character is mostly original to this adaptation; Mr Morton was the vice principal in the original book but has little characterization provided there compared to this much more fleshed out version.
Alison Thornton plays Chris Hargensen and she’s so great – you’re torn between intense sympathy for her and just hating her guts for the stuff she does to Carrie and others. She’s ignored by her Father, forced into a family arrangement she hates by her mother and hits financial issues that are set to ruin the life she’s trying to set up for herself. She’s an afterthought to everyone except for Sue Snell, her best friend, but as Carrie enters the scene and Sue develops a friendship with her, even that is starting to feel distant to Chris. It’s a fantastic villain origin story and it’s played perfectly.
Speaking of Sue Snell, she’s played by Siena Agudong. She does a really great job of playing this dependable, friendly kid who is, unfortunately, surrounded by a bad crowd. She’s not a bad person at all and does her best to befriend Carrie, but it’s made difficult by troubles with her boyfriend and pressure from Chris.
There are plenty of other great performances as well from Rahul Kohli, Katee Sackhoff, Mathew Lillard, Amber Midthunder and Arthur Conti, among others.
Overall 9/10
I think most people who are big Stephen King fans are going to want to check this out – adaptations of his works can be a bit hit or miss but this one, in my opinion, is a big ol’ Hit. I also think it should bring in a bunch of newer people who are, maybe, not familiar with the source material. It’s got an up to date polish to it that should resonate with newer audiences who might be drawn in more by the teenage drama angle to it, versus the horror story side of things. There’s also plenty of star power behind it, too.
I do hope I’m right in that this is a first season to a larger project. It leaves a lot on the table in that last episode. People who have read The Institute will pick up on a lot of the language used, and there’s explicit mention made of ‘the shine’ which was either intended to hint at larger connections or was just a pretty obvious easter egg.
Even if that’s not the case, it’s definitely worth a watch!
Jim’s Final thoughts
The last few years, we Constant Readers have been eating well! Between Carrie and Welcome to Derry, we’ve gotten some great television (Well. Streaming. But still.) and, as mentioned earlier, we have a new book to look forward to in just a few short weeks. Definitely be on the lookout for an article on that one come November!) So, I hope you enjoy Carrie as much as I did.
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