Mike Flanagan’s Carrie: Not Quite but Almost In-Name-Only

By C. Rommial Butler

The problem with Mike Flanagan’s Carrie isn’t that it’s poorly made. It’s very well done.

Production quality, acting, and for the most part, story development, are top notch.

The problem is:

This is in no way, shape, or form an adaptation of the Stephen King novel.

It‘s a soap opera with a telekinetic teenage girl at its center and an obvious checklist of modern cultural and political talking points.

But it has nothing whatsoever to do with the story of Margaret and Carrie White.

This is a story about different people in a different time dealing with totally different issues.

Like many modern retellings, Flanagan’s Carrie loses something vital which was intrinsic to the times in which it was set. For this reason, I would have loved to see Flanagan tell this story in its original setting.

Flanagan’s Carrie doesn’t even try to wrest from its modernization the same archetypical significance which oozes from the characters in King’s book or even De Palma’s film.

It goes its own direction from the beginning, changing the Whites from pure religious zealots to doomsday prepping paranoiac conspiracy theorists who just happen to be religious too.

This, though only one of many changes to the backstories of the various characters, would by itself necessitate an inescapable break from the source material.

The Carrie White which comes out of this situation must necessarily be a different person from King’s tragic character.

And she is. Flanagan and company get that right. They don’t just change the situation. They change the character accordingly.

But I didn’t like it because I was expecting Carrie White, not Carrie Red.

I think that a fair review should come in the form of a warning:

If you are looking for an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, you won’t get that here. You’ll barely get a loose association, not to the point of in-name-only but close enough to make it a disappointment despite the quality of the production.

If you want a teen drama very, very loosely based on the characters from King’s book, with a lot of melodramatic exposition, and some neat little twists along the way, this one’s for you.

But be prepared for a heavy dose of feminist proselytizing. I accept these things as a matter of course now. I don’t view it as any more relevant than the obvious Christian overtones of The Conjuring universe.

It’s just part of the mythology to me—and make no mistake, mythology it is. But it does get tiresome seeing both the Church and its opponents misrepresent history for ideological ends.

I don’t want to spoil Carrie for anyone who might enjoy the twists based on these misrepresentations, so I’ll say no more, but I might refer you to my other Horror to Culture article The Burning Question, which you can find here.

If you want a special Halloween treat, however, I highly recommend the fiftieth anniversary audio book of Carrie read by Sissie Spacek, which I review here at The Cynickal Art.

Whatever your ideological bent, dear reader, I wish you well, and I hope that, in the end, you don’t feel the need to set your own life on fire just to burn down a world that doesn’t care—but I have to admit, though I reject all ideologies, that I can understand the impulse.