Prime Video release
Trailer: Carrie, uploaded by Prime Video on YouTube — watch here.
All eight episodes of Mike Flanagan’s Carrie arrive on Prime Video on 7 October 2026. This is the fourth screen adaptation of Stephen King’s 1974 debut novel and Flanagan’s first series under his Amazon deal following The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher.
The series opens with Ewen High School in Chamberlain, Maine, burning on prom night. With 200 people dead, 9-1-1 recordings circulating and a camera crew interviewing survivors, Flanagan immediately reveals the destination before rewinding to show how Carrie White reached it.
That structure gives the eight-episode format room to deepen the tragedy. Carrie, played by newcomer Summer H. Howell after around 1,300 auditions, has been homeschooled by her mother Margaret until her father dies in a construction-site accident. Suddenly placed in public school, she encounters metal detectors, school-shooting drills, computers and a world she barely understands. Carrie owns no phone, has never used a computer and makes her own clothes.
Howell makes that isolation quietly devastating. Her Carrie is bright, curious and kind, but her kindness makes her seem alien to classmates who understand cruelty as entertainment. Crucially, this Carrie has agency. She is not merely a victim waiting to explode; she is a young woman learning what has been denied to her and discovering the frightening scale of her own power.
A terrifyingly modern update
The locker-room sequence remains the emotional breaking point. Carrie gets her first period, the girls film her distress on their phones and chant “Plug it up!” When the lights explode, the humiliation becomes supernatural. The footage is uploaded to an anonymous social-media account called “carriered”, which soon targets pupils and teachers alike with rumours and memes carrying real-world consequences.
Flanagan understands the toxic combination of technology and telekinesis. The horror is no longer confined to a school corridor or prom video; it can be copied, shared and weaponised indefinitely.
Alison Thornton gives Chris Hargensen more than standard villainy. Chris is the chief bully and the person behind the account, but her home life has collapsed and her father’s money troubles threaten her college plans. Thornton allows pity to sit uncomfortably beside the character’s cruelty. Siena Agudong brings warmth to Sue Snell, while Matthew Lillard makes Principal Grayle’s uncertainty over off-campus online abuse feel painfully plausible. Samantha Sloyan is unnervingly committed as Margaret, reimagined as both religious zealot and “parents’ rights” vlogger.
The series expands King’s references to wronged, gifted women, including Joan of Arc, while women directors Kate Siegel, Axelle Carolyn, Kyra Sedgwick and Hiromi Kamata share the directing duties with Flanagan.
Verdict
The result is ambitious, affecting and imperfect. The framing devices can make the story feel cluttered, while assemblies and meetings sometimes deliver their social commentary too bluntly. The prom sequence cannot match the force of the 1976 film, one subplot feels designed to open a second season, and gestures towards King’s wider psychic universe dilute Carrie’s agency in the finale.
Even so, Carrie is one of the strongest horror series of the year: a superbly acted, strikingly fresh adaptation that earns its eight episodes.
Rating
4 out of 5 — Recommended
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