Carrie Episodes 1 & 2 Review | Fantastic Fest 2026
FANTASTIC FEST 2026 REVIEW
‘Carrie’ Review: Mike Flanagan’s Prime Video Series Finds New Life in Stephen King’s Most Famous Outsider
Few characters in modern horror fiction carry the cultural weight of Carrie White.
Stephen King’s story has endured because the supernatural violence was never the only source of its horror. Bullying, religious extremism, isolation, family dysfunction, shame, curiosity and revenge have always existed underneath Carrie’s eventual eruption. Those themes have allowed the story to survive multiple adaptations, most famously Brian De Palma’s 1976 film, because every generation seems capable of finding a new way to make Carrie’s world cruel.
That makes Mike Flanagan’s new eight-episode Carrie series for Prime Video an intriguing proposition. After seeing the first two episodes at Fantastic Fest 2026, there is already plenty of evidence that expanding Carrie White’s story into television may give Flanagan room to explore parts of King’s world that previous screen adaptations could only briefly touch.
Most importantly, the new Carrie appears to have found its Carrie.
Summer H. Howell steps into one of horror’s most recognizable roles, and those are enormous shoes for any young performer to fill. Two episodes aren’t enough to determine everything this interpretation of Carrie White will eventually become, but Howell immediately removes one of the biggest potential concerns surrounding the series.
She is excellent.
Howell captures the isolation and vulnerability required for Carrie without making her feel like an imitation of previous performances. There is curiosity underneath the fear, something particularly important for a character who has spent much of her life being denied the opportunity to understand herself, her body and the world beyond the boundaries established for her.
Carrie isn’t simply waiting to become dangerous. She’s discovering that there may be more to herself than she’s ever been allowed to understand.
That distinction matters.
Samantha Sloyan plays Margaret White, and the series makes some noticeable adjustments to the way Carrie’s mother functions within a modern world.
Initially, I wasn’t entirely sold on the direction.
This Margaret feels somewhat more restrained than certain previous screen interpretations of the character. But the more interesting decision may be allowing her to interact with contemporary society in ways that expose additional dimensions of her worldview.
A completely isolated existence becomes harder to convincingly maintain in 2026. Phones, social media, schools and the constant connectivity of modern life create circumstances that simply didn’t exist when King published Carrie in 1974.
Rather than ignoring that problem, the series appears prepared to use it.
Some of the strongest material in these opening episodes comes from watching Margaret navigate a society that doesn’t necessarily operate according to the rules she has constructed for herself and her daughter. It creates opportunities to examine the character differently while preserving the religious control and family dysfunction essential to Carrie’s upbringing.
There is another character with significant connections to Carrie’s history whose increased presence initially gave me more hesitation.
Without spoiling how the series is handling that relationship, the character has roots in King’s novel that were considerably less important to De Palma’s film. Expanding that material isn’t inherently a problem. An eight-episode adaptation actually provides an opportunity to restore and reconsider elements of the novel that previous adaptations compressed or omitted.
What matters will be where Flanagan and the writers take it.
Based solely on these first two episodes, I’m not completely convinced by the direction yet. If the character’s expanded presence ultimately serves the larger story and develops ideas already embedded in King’s material, it could become an interesting addition. If what we’ve seen so far represents the full extent of the concept, it may become one of the series’ weaker creative choices.
Fortunately, that concern represents a relatively small portion of two otherwise impressive episodes.
The larger opportunity becomes apparent once Carrie moves beyond Carrie and Margaret.
Television gives this story something a feature film simply cannot provide at the same scale: time.
Siena Agudong plays Sue Snell, while Alison Thornton takes on Chris Hargensen, one of the characters most closely associated with Carrie’s torment. Amber Midthunder appears as gym teacher Miss Desjardin, with Matthew Lillard playing Principal Grayle.
Instead of these characters existing primarily as pieces positioned around Carrie’s inevitable tragedy, the series has an opportunity to make the school and surrounding community feel like an ecosystem.
That may ultimately become the most compelling aspect of this adaptation.
There is already chaos before the chaos.
The familiar bullying remains, but moving Carrie White into the social-media era fundamentally changes its potential scale. Humiliation doesn’t necessarily end when someone leaves school anymore. A cruel moment can be filmed, shared, replayed and preserved. The audience for someone’s humiliation can expand far beyond the people who originally witnessed it.
For Carrie, that’s terrifyingly appropriate.
The original story was already about what happens when cruelty accumulates around someone who has almost nowhere safe to go. Modern technology simply gives that cruelty additional ways to follow her home.
But the first two episodes also suggest Flanagan may be interested in looking beyond the teenagers responsible for the immediate bullying.
The adults matter.
One of the more intriguing possibilities presented by this expanded version of Carrie is an examination of the parents and community surrounding these young people. Teenagers don’t develop in isolation. Neglect, generational trauma, adults pursuing their own needs and parents failing to recognize what is happening in their children’s lives can all contribute to the environment surrounding them.
There are already glimpses of those ideas in the series.
No parent is perfect, nor should the story require them to be. What becomes more interesting is whether Carrie examines the distance between ordinary parental imperfection and the kind of neglect, control or disconnection that allows destructive behavior to grow unchecked.
Margaret represents the most extreme version of parental influence, but she doesn’t necessarily have to be the only parent worth examining.
That wider perspective could give this adaptation its reason to exist.
We already know Carrie White. We know the broad trajectory of her story, and the image of a blood-covered Carrie has become inseparable from horror culture. Simply reproducing those familiar beats over eight episodes wouldn’t justify another adaptation.
Building out Chamberlain might.
Giving Sue, Chris, Miss Desjardin, Principal Grayle and the families surrounding these students more space could transform Carrie from another retelling into a larger examination of the environment capable of producing the tragedy audiences know is coming.
After two episodes, that possibility is exciting.
There is an inevitable challenge in reviewing only a quarter of an eight-episode series. Several ideas introduced here clearly haven’t reached their destination, and some of my reservations could disappear entirely once their purpose becomes apparent.
For now, however, Flanagan has built a compelling foundation.
The modern setting doesn’t feel like an excuse to simply put smartphones into Carrie. It potentially gives the story another mechanism for exploring humiliation, isolation and the inability to escape the people determined to make someone suffer.
And Howell gives that world the Carrie White it needs.
The first two episodes suggest a series interested in more than waiting for the blood to start flowing. It wants to understand Carrie, but perhaps more importantly, it wants to understand the people and community surrounding her before everything burns.
We know where this story can eventually go.
The exciting part is discovering how Flanagan plans to get us there.
Based on these opening episodes, I’m ready to keep watching.
First Two Episodes: 4 out of 5
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