Let’s get one thing out of the way upfront: I love Mike Flanagan. The writer-director-editor-showrunner extraordinaire has made some of my favorite horror media from across the past decade between films like Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep and TV shows like The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass.
So I am very much not one to thumb my nose at a new Mike Flanagan joint, just the opposite; I have been keenly awaiting the release of his latest horror series, Prime Video’s Carrie, for years. But as its release date loomed closer, I’ve found myself wondering: was Flanagan really the right person to do a new Carrie adaptation?
The feminist perspective of Carrie
Carrie was famously the first book ever published by now-iconic and extremely prolific author Stephen King back in 1974. For the uninitiated, Carrie is a direct and extremely effective horror novel that chronicles the tragedy of Carrie White, a teenage girl who is frequently bullied in high school and comes to discover that she has telekinetic abilities.
The book opens with Carrie getting her very first period in gym class and closes with her winning prom queen shortly before getting pig’s blood spilled all over her in a cruel prank, which leads to her telekinetic abilities lashing out and a massacre unfolding.
It is a tragedy, through and through, and Flanagan has historically proven himself to be stellar at those. But it’s also a story told distinctly through a feminist perspective, both metaphorically and literally. Metaphorically, the fact that the inciting incident of Carrie’s story is her getting her first period is no accident; King is telling a story of the transition from girlhood into womanhood, and the horrors that come with it.
And in a very literal sense, though King the author is male, there’s a host of characters from whose perspective audiences experience the events of the book, and the majority of them are female.
Just two years after the release of King’s book, in 1976, the Brian De Palma-directed Carrie was released in theaters. And again, yes, De Palma is a male. But, to quote filmmaker Karyn Kusama, De Palma’s film has been hailed for decades as a pillar of “feminist horror.” So in 2026, should Flanagan be another man tackling Carrie, a work that is so iconic and associated with feminist perspectives?
Women’s involvement in the 2026 show
There’s clearly an argument to be made that answer to that question is no; that Flanagan’s years of experience in turning King novels into great movies don’t necessarily qualify him for this position. And that’s absolutely a valid point, but I would also say that there’s a stark contrast to that in the list of collaborators Flanagan brought aboard the project with him.
The showrunner directed half of the series’ eight episodes, but the other four are directed by Kate Siegel (his wife and frequent collaborator) , Axelle Carolyn, Kyra Sedgwick, and Hiromi Kamata; all of whom are women.
That is both deeply admirable from an ethical standpoint and great from a creative standpoint, as it allows each of these incredible filmmakers to bring pieces of themselves to the story in meaningful ways.
While speaking with Collider at the Toronto International Film Festival, Flanagan stated, “I was painfully aware from the beginning that middle-aged men have been telling Carrie White’s story for far too long,” highlighting the importance of bringing in more women behind the scenes.
So ultimately, it probably shouldn’t have been Flanagan to bring Carrie to life again, but it seems like the filmmaker himself is well aware of that and has gone out of his way to ensure that this new take on King’s story preserves and foregrounds the feminist elements, just as King’s novel and De Palma’s original adaptation did.
All eight episodes of Carrie are now streaming on Prime Video. Read our episodic recaps:
Add us as a preferred source on Google