Carrie (2026) No Spoiler Review: Flanagan Up Front, King at the Back, Mean Girls in the Middle

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Carrie (2026) has a great cast and an excellent modern setup, but a mushy middle and more dread than actual scares make it lesser Mike Flanagan.

We were excited for this one and watched it the first week it came out on Prime Video. Flanagan’s eight-episode series is a modern-day retelling of the Stephen King novel, and it sets up its premise in the first few minutes. It totally makes sense. Cheers to Flanagan for making a Stephen King story relevant in 2026. King is an executive producer, apparently because he liked the modern retelling so much.

The modern-day setup of Carrie White, and why she is the way she is by the time she first walks into school, was perfect, and so are all the dynamics that come from that. The trio of antagonists in the first episode is very well developed. You know they’re villains, but you also get to know them, so you understand where they’re coming from, and that’s really important to building an antagonist.

That modern setting is also where the real horror is. Some people said the biggest horror of this series is the bullying, and the world we live in now, with school shootings and social media. In the original versions, the bullying stopped when Carrie went home. In 2026, if it’s on social media, it follows you around all the time, forever, and that really is scary. And while we understand and can sympathize with the dread of an American high school student, we, much like the students in the show, have grown desensitized to the horror of our normal lives. So while that is dreadful, it didn’t quite work for us. We were looking forward to the usual horror of Mike Flanagan, and in this case, paired with Stephen King.

Our one big gripe starts in the first episode. Like the book, the series tells its story in an epistolary style, through news clippings, witness reports, and interviews, and by the end of episode 1 those add up to a narrative preview of everything that’s going to happen. It spoiled the ending. And while yes, the book and the movie are from the 70s, a lot of people will be watching this for the first time. We weren’t fans of that reveal, and I think the show could have used some creative control there.

Then by episode 4 it turns into Mean Girls (2004), a school drama complete with sassy teachers with backstories of their own and a little bit of romance, and all of that just seemed out of place. My theory is that Flanagan started with the idea of how to do a modern-day Carrie, and he already knew how to retell the ending and make sense of its most memorable scene. He then had to fill in everything in between, ergo the middle is a little bit mushy. It’s telling that the start and the end are the strongest parts. Flanagan directed four of the eight episodes himself, including the first two, and I’d bet the last two are his as well.

What we liked about the ending was the buildup and the explanation of the iconic final scenes: the scene in the gymnasium, and all the chaos and destruction. But what happens after the prom, albeit inferred from the original source, feels forced and out of place, and some characters and plotlines just appear out of nowhere.

The performances are great all around. Summer H. Howell is very well cast as Carrie and very believable, and it feels like a breakout role for her. She perfectly captures what might be Flanagan’s intent, making Carrie such a beacon of joy and hope, and that adds to the heartbreak of watching the world be mean to her and break her down. Samantha Sloyan, who was great in Midnight Mass (2021), plays the doting and controlling mother, and she should get an Emmy nomination for this. Great performances from Alison Thornton and Siena Agudong too, and we’re looking forward to more from them. It was also nice to see Amber Midthunder, who we most remember as the main protagonist in Prey (2022), in more things.

This series is more dreadful than scary. I think Flanagan is most effective when he actually creeps you out and scares you, and the closest this got was a stabbing scene in the last episode. That’s why we were a little disappointed, because we really like Flanagan. We loved The Life of Chuck (2024), and we also liked The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), but Midnight Mass was really a masterpiece, and it’s a Flanagan original. (Everyone, please watch that one. It’s really terrifying.) I know he’s set on making The Dark Tower for Stephen King next, but I’ll be more excited for original Mike Flanagan stories.

★★★★☆ for me, ★★★☆☆ for her.

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