Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
16-year-old Carrie White has almost never stepped out of the perimeter of her house. She is home-schooled, imparted a deeply religious education, her only window to the outside world are the few books her neighbor sometimes secretly leaves for her to read. But when Mr White dies, Carrie and her mother Margaret are forced to end their isolated existence. Margaret White is advised into re-integrate into society if she doesn’t want to lose her daughter to social services, while teen Carrie must attend a local high-school.
Adapted from Stephen King’s iconic debut horror novel of the same name, Mike Flanagan’s (Haunting of Hill Houses, Midnight Mass) live-action adaptation of the tale for modern audiences gives ‘Carrie’ (played by Summer H. Howell) a more complex, layered update, maximizing the time and space afforded by the eight-episode show format. Samantha Sloyan is perfectly cast as Margaret White, Carrie’s fanatically religious mother, who is portrayed as far more manipulative, yet ironically, also more human in this contemporary adaptation.
The first episode opens documentary style, already revealing the key climactic twist of the novel: a major fire tears through town, claiming several lives. A crew interviews the survivors to understand what really happened, and multiple testimonies point to a sophomore student, Carrie, new to the school. Each person has a wildly different word to describe her. Kind. Mean. Sweet. Bully. Hero. Monster. And that she had something to do with the fire.
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Summer H. Howell reminded me a bit of a young Brooke Shields, she is gorgeous, and quite unlike the ‘ugly duckling’ describe in King’s original novel. The 2026 show’s Carrie is sweet, trusting, open, optimistic, repentant when she does something wrong, and kind even when she doesn’t need to be. When she steps into school for the first time, she is excited to learn everything, is fascinated by computers, and is ready to make friends. Unfortunately she is bowed down and broken by relentless bullying.
Alison Thornton plays Chris Hargensen, Carrie’s chief tormentor, pretending to be her friend, while running a fake online account on the new girl’s name to shame, harass, and horridly troll everybody at school. Even teachers aren’t spared. Chris is the popular mean girl, while her best-friend Sue Snell (Siena Agudong), another popular kid, decides to watch out for Carrie, aware of the new student’s background. Thalia Dudek plays Emaline, another new students at the school, who decides to befriend the malleable Carrie and influence her behavior.
Mike Flanagan and team engagingly expand the Carrie universe by updating it to the world of cellphone, social media, brutal online trolling and doxxing. Amber Midthunder, Rahul Kohli and Tim Bagley play teachers at the high-school, who hilariously enjoy gossiping about the students, but obviously don’t find it funny anymore when the fake account starts malicious rumors about them too. A major sub-plot in the show follows Margaret White taking on the school over the online bullying her daughter faces.
One of the cleverer, more comical twists in 2026’s ‘Carrie’ is how Margaret White, despite being something of a Luddite, readily embraces social media and weaponises it to turn public opinion again st the school and air her grievances. Although it’s been ages since I read Stephen King’s novel, this version of Margaret is 100% less overtly evil and oppressive than I remember her being in the original. Unfortunately, that also robs the story of some of its more unsettling horror, especially the dread that comes from Carrie’s suffocating home life. Mrs White simply isn’t as shadowy, creepy or frustratingly villainous here, so the terror she inspires is tame.
The teenage characters, on the other hand, get considerably more fleshed-out backstories. They’re no longer just a bunch of mean kids ganging up on the new girl. Siena Agudong is sweet and likeable as the ambitious, high-achieving Sue Snell, who serves as a foil to her self-centred, egocentric and downright bitchy BFF, Chris Hargensen. Alison Thornton is quietly vicious as Chris, spoiled rotten by her father John (Michael Trucco), while her mother Madison (Heather Graham) conveniently overlooks her problematic behaviour, too busy focusing on her new boyfriend. Much of Chris’s bullying and hostility towards people who’ve done nothing to deserve it stems from her insecurities over her parents’ separation and the lack of attention she receives at home.
In a way, Carrie and Chris are two sides of the same coin. While Carrie’s overprotective, conservative mother isolates her from the outside world, warping her childhood but preserving her innocence and kindness, Chris grows increasingly rotten because her parents barely bother parenting her at all. Her father’s idea of looking after her is handing out a generous allowance and throwing money at every problem. One suffers from extensive control, while the other is a victim of neglect.
Summer H. Howell is terrific as Carrie, gradually transforming from an innocent, wide-eyed, curious, intelligent and forgiving teenager into a rage-filled young woman who begins choosing violence over words. At first, she quietly and sneakily bends her mother’s rules, but as her high school experiences harden her, she gradually begins challenging Margaret’s authority more openly. She goes from victim to survivor to villain in her own tale, and the transformation is so convincing that it almost feels like watching her grow up over several years rather than just eight episodes.
The show’s world-building is visually gritty, and the creative team does full justice to the iconic climactic sequence, where everything goes horribly wrong at the prom. The striking contrast between Carrie in the beautiful, delicate white dress she sews for herself and the bloody chaos that erupts around her is a hell of a spectacle. Some of it is so over-the-top that it suddenly feels like dark comedy.
For a horror series, however, this updated Carrie isn’t quite as tense, terrifying or unhinged as it could have been. Nevertheless, it’s a solid adaptation that explores the struggles of an isolated teenager desperately trying to find her place in an unfamiliar world. And the ending leaves the door open for a spin-off series with an entirely different twist!
Rating: 3.5 stars on 5. Watch Carrie on Prime Video.
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