Carrie in the age of the gram: How Flanagan rewrites a 50-year-old humiliation

Mike Flanagan retells Carrie as an eight-episode Prime Video series set in the social media age. The adaptation reshapes the Stephen King novel's ending while retaining the prom-night horror.

In Short

• Flanagan retells Carrie in the age of phones and posts
• Margaret now loves Carrie, but she hated her in 1976
• Unlike the novel and earlier films, Carrie survives this time

Spoiler alert: This story reveals major plot points from Carrie (2026), including the ending.

Carrie White was crowned prom queen, and the crown was a trap.

No one voted for her out of kindness. Chris Hargensen, the girl who had spent months making Carrie's life miserable, voted for her again and again with a hacking tool, and rigged the result. If you think Hargensen had a change of heart, she did not. She had a bucket full of pig blood.

Why are we talking about Carrie? Because Mike Flanagan, the man behind The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and the director who has made Halloween his own on streaming, has turned Stephen King's 1974 debut novel into an eight-episode series on Prime Video. It arrives 50 years after Brian De Palma's 1976 film, which earned Sissy Spacek an Oscar nomination.

What sets it apart is the lens. De Palma's Carrie lived only among gym floors and locker rooms. Flanagan's lives in our world, where cruelty can be filmed, captioned and posted before the victim has dried her eyes.

The story is the same one, retold in the age of social media and phones.

Is it as good as the film? It is immensely well-made, though it does not quite match the film's most famous scene: the prom night massacre. The two are alike in many ways and different in the ways that matter. Let us begin with the night everything broke.

THE NIGHT OF THE PROM

Tommy Ross, who took Summer Howell's Carrie to the dance, was one of the few people who treated her with unconditional kindness.

He was also the most popular boy in school, so nobody was surprised when he was crowned prom king. Carrie and Tommy climbed onto the stage together.

She was smiling, and unfathomably happy. The poor girl thought she had finally been given the love and recognition she deserved.

Above them, in the fly loft, stood Hargensen and her boyfriend, Billy Nolan. Hargensen had been expelled from Ewen High School for running an anonymous Instagram account called Carrie Red, where she posted an insensitive video of Carrie along with controversial posts about other students.

She and Nolan, a drug dealer, had killed a pig, collected its blood and filled a bucket. As Carrie stood in the light, they tipped it over her. Tommy, the one boy who had been kind to her, did not live to see the morning.

For a girl who had been simmering for years, that was the final nail in the coffin.

THE GIRL WHO WAS PUSHED TOO FAR

Carrie had been bullied left, right and centre since joining Ewen High. Before that, her world was one house and one voice. She was home-schooled by her religious fanatic mother, Margaret White. After Carrie's father died in a construction site accident, the state made schooling compulsory, or Margaret would have lost custody of her daughter.

Then came her first period. Carrie did not know what was happening to her body, and thought she was bleeding to death.

Hargensen, enjoying her ignorance, pushed her under a running shower in the locker room, and the entire gym class pelted her with tampons, chanting, "Plug it up, plug it up." Even Sue Snell, who was not as cruel as the others, joined in the mockery.

Carrie shrieked, and the lights began to flicker. She had telekinesis, the power to move objects with her mind, though she did not know it yet. Bullying had pushed her so far that her gift tore out of her before she could understand it.

Slowly, she realised she was born with something special, and began to use it. Her fury was not only about school. At home, her sanctimonious mother had dominated her since childhood. When the pig blood landed, years of anger had nowhere left to go.

That night, Carrie shattered every light in the hall and sent shards of glass flying. The students' phones exploded, injuring them severely.

THE GIRL WHO WHISPERS REVENGE

Then there is Emaline, who appears in neither the novel nor the 1976 film. Flanagan introduced her as an astral projector, someone whose spirit can travel without her body. She stays physically away from Carrie until the very end, yet keeps urging her to use her powers and take revenge on those who hurt her.

Here the two versions split. I understand Carrie's rage. I find it harder to accept where it ended. In the 1976 film, she burnt the building down, and the dead included her gym teacher, the one adult who had looked after her. Hargensen and Nolan tried to escape in a car, but Carrie chased them and overturned it, and it burst into flames. Flanagan keeps that scene too.

The difference is who holds the wheel. In the series, Emaline fuels Carrie's anger, so much so that she ends up killing the gym teacher. Sissy Spacek's Carrie answered to nobody. She chose to burn the school down herself.

That choice makes the 1976 film more disturbing, and it makes Spacek's Carrie the more tragic figure. In the series, part of the blame is handed to someone else.

A MOTHER WHO LOVES TOO MUCH

The biggest change is Margaret. In the 1976 film, she hated her daughter, and called her an abomination when she got her first period. In the 2026 series, she loves Carrie immensely, but holds her so tightly that it hurts.

That leaves a question hanging over the show. At what point must love end? Is it even love if it smothers?

I also feel Howell's Carrie is the stronger character. She refuses her mother's dominion, and when matters reach boiling point, she flings Margaret across the room. She will not accept bad behaviour either, which is why she breaks Hargensen's nose to get even.

Yet the series loses some of its build-up when Emaline steers Carrie's wrath. De Palma's prom scene still wins on tension. You sit there biting your fingers, waiting for the bucket to fall. The series is more rushed. Its eighth episode felt hurried.

THE BUCKET THAT NEVER STOPS FALLING

There is one more change, and it may be the smartest. In 1976, humiliation was confined to a room. Carrie went home, and the laughter stayed behind in the gym.

In the series, the laughter follows her. The anonymous Carrie Red account turns a single insult into something that can be shared, replayed and found again, long after the moment has passed. The bucket of blood has always been the story's most famous image. Today, it would also be a video, passed from phone to phone.

That is what the modern lens does. It takes a story about a girl in a small town and shows how little distance a cruel joke now has to travel. Bullying no longer ends at the school gate.

WHAT HAPPENS TO MARGARET

Just like in the film, Margaret tries to kill her daughter. As Carrie brings the house down in self-defence, Margaret dies in De Palma's film. In Flanagan's version, she survives.

The reason is that Margaret has telekinetic powers of her own, though only a little. They call it "The Shine". Ring a bell? The term comes from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) and from Flanagan's own Doctor Sleep (2020).

By the end, a cult is interviewing Sue and Margaret about Carrie's abilities. Sue insists it "was not just Carrie" who caused the fire that night. Margaret thinks such powers are evil.

Adelaide, played by Kate Siegel, leads a coven that gathers people with supernatural gifts. She decides Margaret is no longer of use, and stops her heart, making it look like a natural death.

THE BIGGEST TWIST: CARRIE SURVIVES

In the novel and in the 1976 and 2013 versions, Carrie dies. In the 2026 series, she walks out of the wreckage with Emaline, running from the cult. The whole world lies open before them, and they can live on their own terms, not dictated by a world that never accepted them.

Why did Flanagan let her live? I suspect he is planting seeds. The Shine, the coven and a heroine who walks away from the fire all hint at a wider Stephen King universe, linking The Shining, Doctor Sleep, Firestarter, Carrie and more. That is my reading of the clues, not something he has confirmed.

WHAT THE STORY STILL SAYS

The 1976 film and the series disagree on plenty: who is to blame, whether a mother can love and wound at once, whether a girl like Carrie gets to live. They agree on one thing.

Bullying is the real horror, and cruelty always sends a bill. In Carrie, it arrives in a single night. In our world, it arrives with a notification.

- Ends