Carrie opens with the aftermath, and the interviews are the best thing in it

Spoiler note: spoiler-light. It describes how episode one opens, says the series widens the story beyond Carrie herself, the prom included, and mentions the second-season renewal, which implies the story continues past the novel’s ending. It names the prom, a shower scene and a drill scene without saying what happens in them. Wikipedia and the Nerdist interview discuss later episodes and the ending, NOW Toronto spoils episodes one and two, and But Why Tho gives away the episode one set-up.

I loved this series, and the best thing in it is the way it begins. The warning for readers of this site comes first: to me it plays as a drama. I found no gore to speak of and no jump scares worth the name. The exception is the prom, where the blood is big and staged for effect, and it works as a callback to the original. Ferreira at NOW Toronto, who saw only the first two episodes, noted a few jump scares, so my impression differs from hers.

we were always looking at this story as a tragedy more than a horror story

Most people who sit down with “Carrie” already know the prom, often without ever having decided to learn it. The series opens through interviews instead of a straight retelling, and to me that was far more powerful than a traditional recap would have been. This is my opinion, and I watched on my own subscription.

The opening

Two critics who reviewed the first two episodes describe the same opening, and I recognise it. Sarah Musnicky at But Why Tho says the series begins “in almost a true-crime documentary fashion,” with news clips of the incident and interviewees voicing the debate that has followed Carrie since the novel appeared. Beatriz Ferreira at NOW Toronto adds that the documentary is about a disaster that burned a high school and several streets, with survivors who remember Carrie very differently. Both are describing the first two episodes, and I am borrowing their word “documentary” for the opening only.

The people on camera disagree about who Carrie was, so the first thing the series gives you is a question about her. A recap would have told me what happened. This made me ask who she was, which is a better question to be handed about a story I thought I knew.

It also loosens my grip on that story. Ferreira writes that Flanagan makes clear viewers should not be so sure they know how it ends, and Musnicky keeps one development to herself because, she says, the less said going in, the better for surprise. A critic guarding a twist in a story this old suggests this version is not quite the one everyone knows.

Flanagan told Nerdist there is “really no point in remaking Carrie” because it has been done so iconically, and that the team came at the characters from a very different perspective. In Ferreira’s account of the festival Q&A he went further, saying he wanted to build something new from the novel’s essence. I think that is the right standard, and the opening meets it.

An interview format also suits this book. Wikipedia describes the novel as in part epistolary, built from multiple narrators and a collection of reports and excerpts, and says King wrote in fabricated documents attributed to periodicals such as Esquire and Reader’s Digest. The novel was already partly assembled from the record of what happened afterward, so a documentary frame reads to me as a modern cousin of that method.

The prom and the scenes that surprised me

I would like to pick one scene to praise and cannot, so I will name two: the drill scene and the shower scene. Both played so much better than the material led me to expect. I am keeping the drill scene to myself.

The prom is the one place I would call the series big, and it is the reason “no gore to speak of” needs an exception. The blood there is staged for effect, and it works as a callback to the original that I thought was exceptionally well executed. Wikipedia reports that Flanagan called it the most difficult sequence of his career to film, and that Summer H. Howell, who plays Carrie, estimated she spent twelve days covered in blood shooting it. I did not catch who built the effects and the sources do not say how much was practical, so I will not guess at credits.

More drama than horror

Outside the prom, the series plays closer to “Wednesday” or a typical police drama than to a traditional horror series. Wikipedia lists its genres as supernatural horror and teen drama, and from where I sat the second label did most of the work. Ferreira, reviewing only the first two episodes, also found it light for a horror adaptation.

Flanagan has a way of describing the story that fits. In an answer about why the prom involves more than Carrie alone, he told Nerdist, “we were always looking at this story as a tragedy more than a horror story.” A tragedy needs an audience that cares about the people in it, and the interviews do the work of making that happen.

He is candid about where that came from. His way into the story was Margaret, played by Samantha Sloyan. His son was about to start high school and he was anxious about the world the boy was heading into, so he asked what would change if Margaret loved her daughter and did not know how to keep her safe. We can disagree with her choices and still understand where she is coming from. That is a parent’s way into a horror story, and it explains why the series spends its time with its people. To me it is the strongest evidence that drama is the point of this version.

The case against

Some critics object to qualities I liked. Wikipedia’s summary of the reviews collects them, under a banner saying that section’s neutrality is disputed. The same summary reports an 85 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 133 reviews and a Metacritic score of 72, retrieved on October 22 and October 10, and the Rotten Tomatoes consensus says Flanagan “aptly expands this teen mythos.” By those measures the balance of reviews is favourable, and the dissent below is the exception.

Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter argues, as Wikipedia quotes him, that in expanding the story it loses “some of the engine” that drives it toward its conclusion. Even a viewer who knows no version of it, he says, senses that something bad is coming at the prom, and when it arrives it “isn’t as disturbing or terrifying as it ought to be.” Emma Stefansky of The Atlantic, per Wikipedia, writes that the series is almost too empathetic toward its main players and takes away the catharsis of Carrie’s big moment: “Defanging Carrie means flinching away from the unforgiving bleakness that makes the story so memorable.”

Fienberg is describing the prom, and Stefansky’s “big moment” reads to me as the same scene, though I have seen only the excerpts. I watched it differently. I would not call the series terrifying. The prom did not feel soft to me, though, and it was well made. What I can concede is the sympathy they describe: a series that listens to everyone around Carrie and treats its characters as people caught inside larger forces will play as a drama, and it will lose some teeth. If you wanted the bleakness that has kept this story hard to shake for fifty years, you may feel it thinned. The two headlines point in different directions: Fienberg’s pairs “capably expands” with a question about whether the expansion was needed, and James Jackson’s in The Times calls the series “a horrifying tale for our times.”

Where it comes loose

My complaint is about execution. I was very happy with the root story, which the series respects. But the longer it ran, the more it felt like a backdoor to more series, with something new loosely bolted onto a story that did not need it.

Wikipedia reports that Flanagan ran with the wider storyline from the first episode and envisioned a three-season show, citing a Deadline headline about a “dream scenario,” and that the series was originally billed as a miniseries before Prime Video renewed it for a second season in October 2026. On Wikipedia’s account, then, it was planned from early on. I felt the seams anyway. Musnicky, reviewing the first two episodes, praised how the series turns characters who can feel one-note elsewhere into rounded people, and also flagged the introduction of new story components as the highest risk for Flanagan. She said she had confidence he would nail it. I watched the rest, and my own confidence did not hold.

The production has a stated reason for widening the story, and it deserves a hearing. Asked why the prom involves more than Carrie alone, Flanagan told Nerdist that tragedies often have many authors and culpability is not simple, and that a night with that scale of destruction gave him the chance to open the story up beyond Carrie. I take the reasoning seriously.

Others noticed the same weight. Fienberg is quoted writing that Flanagan is “extending and over-extending the text,” and, per Wikipedia, James Jackson says “an overprotracted finale and various other superfluous additions” made him long for the concision of the original film. Wikipedia adds that some critics were divided over the changes from the novel.

What makes it frustrating is that the strong parts are so strong. The opening interviews and the root story hold up without the extra material.

What I would say to a friend

If a friend who knows the 1976 film asked whether this is worth their time, I would tell them what it is: a drama about a famous disaster, with an excellent prom and a back half that carries more baggage than it needs.