Mike Flanagan's Carrie Tops Prime Video as Review Backs Modern Bullying Story but Questions Its Ending

The season follows Carrie White, played by Summer H. Howell, after her father dies in a tragic accident and authorities send her to a public school for the first time while her mother, Margaret, played by Samantha Sloyan, re-enters the workforce. Raised at home by overbearing religious parents, Carrie knows little of the outside world, and the review says she is baffled by ordinary parts of school life such as a shooting drill and her first period, both of which frighten her to the point that she fears she is about to die. Her struggle to adjust is the catalyst for the story.

TechRadar's reviewer writes that Howell plays Carrie with a focus on her compassion for others and her desperate need to fit in, trying to relate to classmates even though she has never used a computer and does not have a cellphone. In the eyes of the school she is seen as weird, making her a perfect target for bullying.

Setting the story in the present day is a change the reviewer welcomed. The review says Flanagan uses social media, camera phones and the internet at large to torment Carrie even more than she was tormented in the book, describing the technology as both wonderful and anxiety-inducing. The bullying, in the reviewer's view, becomes more intense as a result.

The school bullies are handled with similar care, according to the review. Alison Thornton plays Chris Hargensen, the ringleader, and the reviewer praises the performance, saying Flanagan gives attention to Chris's own problems and the collapse of her family life at home instead of turning her into a cartoonish villain. Siena Agudong's Sue Snell is presented as a complex character who begins to feel remorse for Carrie's ongoing torment while those around her do not, and the reviewer names her among the favorites for that reason. Most of the characters, the review says, felt well-rounded.

One character drew criticism. The reviewer was disappointed in Margaret White, who is portrayed more sympathetically in the series, and argues she should have been crueler. While her intense and suffocating religious beliefs are shown, she is more empathetic towards Carrie, and the reviewer disliked the softening. In the novel and in Brian De Palma's film, Margaret's resentment of her daughter contributed to Carrie's eventual breakdown and her use of her power for destruction, something the reviewer considers important. Carrie never found comfort at home in the original story, and the series' decision to have Margaret support her daughter, the review says, removes some of the crippling isolation that leads to the prom scene.

The ending also differs from the novel, which the review notes may not please some fans. The reviewer says the ending was less of a problem personally but would still have preferred Margaret's characterization to be more faithful to the source material. That, the review states, is its only major complaint.

Flanagan is by now a familiar name to horror audiences. This is his sixth adaptation of King's work, following films including Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep, and he is known for the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. The review also points to a school faculty that ultimately fails Carrie as one of the series' effective threads, and cites some very effective scares and a catchy soundtrack full of hidden gems among its strengths.