I really wanted to love Mike Flanagan's Carrie. Not because I have been waiting for its release ever since I saw the first trailer. But because I am a huge fan of Stephen King's 1974 novel.
And i really do not think Carrie needed another adaptation. It really doesn’t. Brian De Palma already gave us one of the great horror films, and Stephen King’s novel has been adapted more than once since then. But putting the story into an eight-episode series gives Flanagan something the movies never really had: time.
And mostly he gets it right. Flanagan's Carrie tells the story of Carrie White (played by Summer H. Howell), a teenager growing up under the influence of her extremely religious mother Margaret (Samantha Sloyan). After having been isolated for most of her life, Carrie must learn to navigate school, other teenagers, and everything that her mom taught her to be afraid of. Alongside this, Carrie develops telekinetic powers.
What makes the story work is the fact that Flanagan doesn't jump straight into the climax. He spends a lot of time with Carrie before the famous prom, and this actually makes the main character much more understandable. Carrie is not only a weirdo that everyone teases, but a teenage girl longing for friends and trying to understand how to live normally.
Summer H. Howell does a great job playing Carrie. She shows her not only as a miserable girl, but also as someone who is actually capable of enjoying things. This adds a lot of poignancy to the fate of Carrie because you can see the girl she could have become if she had grown up under different conditions.
And of course there is Margaret. Samantha Sloyan is definitely the best thing about the show. Margaret is clearly a terrifying character, but she is not portrayed only as a one-sided religious freak. She is convinced that what she is doing is right and believes that she is protecting her daughter. This makes their relationship even more disturbing because of the genuine love that lies underneath everything.
And then Carrie goes to school. Here the series gets its contemporary feel. The bullying does not disappear as soon as the children go home but continues through phones and social media. It becomes impossible to escape humiliation when an embarrassing video can be filmed, uploaded, and distributed within minutes.
All in all, it fits perfectly with the story, but sometimes Flanagan beats the idea to death.
There are moments in the show when it seems that Flanagan wants to constantly remind us that teenagers nowadays are really horrible because of social media. We understood it already and don't need a show to guide us through the process.
It happens the same way with the supernatural aspect of the story. I think it is nice that Flanagan tried to broaden the world of Carrie, but I'm not so sure that it helps the story. One of the things that made Carrie frightening is the fact that she is really an exception. She is a girl with something inside of her that nobody knows how to handle.
As soon as the show starts expanding the supernatural element, some of the mystery goes away.
Another aspect of the eight-episode format that works both ways is the fact that there is more time for Sue Snell and Chris Hargensen. I actually enjoyed it because it gave me a chance to better understand these characters, who otherwise would appear to be just supporting characters in a horror movie.
But at the same time, there are moments when it is quite clear that the show starts moving slowly. And it isn't something that Carrie needed.
The biggest surprise of the show was that I didn't really care about the scares. This is not a terrifying version of Carrie. There are creepy moments, and I can say that Flanagan is very good at creating suspense, but I was not sitting there scared. In fact, the show is more focused on making Carrie tragic than on making her terrifying. It isn't necessarily a bad thing.
By the time the story reaches the climax at the prom, you already know where everything is heading. There is no mystery anymore. The question is not whether Carrie will break. The question is how long it will take before she does it. And when she finally does it, it doesn't give the feeling of satisfaction that I was expecting.
Instead, it is a feeling of something very horrible. Probably this is what Flanagan wanted.
The problem is that he sometimes makes the show so sympathetic toward almost everyone that it loses some of the horror. There are moments when I wish that some of the characters were simply terrible people. Not every villain has a backstory explaining why he or she turned into such.
Sometimes people are just cruel. But it doesn't mean that the series is bad. It just means that this is not the Carrie that I expected.
If you are coming to the series waiting for something as vicious as De Palma's adaptation, you will be disappointed. If you are looking for a fast-paced horror series, it will probably feel too slow. But if you want a more extended version of the story, there is enough in it to make it worth watching.
Howell makes a great Carrie, and Sloyan is simply brilliant as Margaret. These two performances are the reason why the series works as well as it does.
I just wish that Flanagan trusted the story a bit more. Just like he did with The Fall of the House of Usher
Carrie doesn't need any kind of mythology. It doesn't need to be explained. It doesn't need to turn everyone into a character with a complicated history.
A lonely girl has been pushed too far. That's it.
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