Why Carrie Still Can't Be Topped (And Why Everyone Keeps Trying Anyway)
Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) is a brilliant, polarizing revenge tale with a supernatural twist. Depending on who you ask, Carrie White is either a villain or a girl who was failed by everyone with a duty to help her. The case for the defense is strong: she was abused by her classmates, by her Christian zealot mother, and by a school system whose idea of intervention was a shrug. Fifty years on, people are still arguing about whether the prom was an atrocity or a long-overdue performance review.
What you can't argue with is her legacy. Hollywood has tried to resurrect her again and again: a 2002 TV movie, a 2013 remake, and The Rage: Carrie 2 in 1999, whose peer-pressure and pre-Me Too themes have been dissected more than the movie probably deserved. Now Amazon has dragged her back for an eight-episode limited series from showrunner Mike Flanagan.
The Story, Now With More Wi-Fi
Flanagan's version follows the familiar outline. Carrie is a misfit high schooler who has spent her life in seclusion with her domineering mother, Margaret. After her father's sudden death, she faces the alien landscape of public high school, a bullying scandal that shatters her community, and the arrival of mysterious telekinetic powers. It's the same dish, served cold.
Yes, a few scenes are lifted straight from the 1976 classic, but that's about where the resemblance ends. Flanagan relocates the story to Gen Z, where the cruelty isn't just committed but recorded. Every humiliation gets filmed by spectators who treat other people's worst moments as content, including moments involving the very people being wronged. In 1976 you got bullied and went home. In this version you get bullied and trend.
Margaret White is still a religious fanatic, but she's toned down compared to Piper Laurie's iconic, scenery-devouring performance. She's now also a social activist, calling out Chrissy Hargensen and the other bullies, which is a fascinating pivot for a woman who once treated a period like a demonic infestation.
The series has its predictable beats and a few surprises. Chief among them is Carrie's "friend" Emmaline, whose friendship comes in the scare-quote variety. Carrie also takes initiative to earn respect, which is a nice change of pace from the original's strategy of having respect pelted at her in the form of tampons. Nearly every episode opens with a paranormal reenactment of other girls and women with unexplained supernatural abilities. It's fictional but speculative, and it gives the whole thing a "this could happen to you, probably not" tone.
Then there's the execution. The constant needle drops start to feel like someone is pressing "shuffle" on a playlist instead of scoring a scene. The dialogue is weak, and the scenarios are so dialed in that you can feel the writers stretching to fill eight episodes. And the finale? It plays less like the climax of a Stephen King tragedy and more like a script from an X-Men comic, complete with a mutant-in-crisis showdown and the kind of escalation that makes you wonder whether Professor X is going to roll in and offer Carrie a scholarship. It's serviceable, but like the other reboots and sequels, it's unwarranted.
Why Reboot a Classic?
So once again: why remake a classic when none of the remakes can measure up?
There are exceptions. David Cronenberg's The Fly, John Carpenter's The Thing, Zac Snyder's Dawn of The Dead and Scarface, which De Palma himself directed, all justified their existence. Yet one of the best horror films ever made is also one of the most frequently redone. Carrie is based on Stephen King's 1974 novel, but it's the 1976 adaptation that most horror fans actually know. Nobody is quoting the paperback at the horror convention.
Why the 1976 Version Wins
The original works because every element serves the same tragedy. Sissy Spacek makes Carrie fragile, strange, and heartbreaking, and the film never lets you look away from her humanity. Piper Laurie makes Margaret terrifying precisely because she believes she's saving her daughter. Both earned Oscar nominations, which for a horror film in that era is roughly like a possum getting a library card.
De Palma's craft does the rest. The split-screen and slow-motion of the prom sequence turn a humiliation into an operatic nightmare, and Pino Donaggio's score swings between tenderness and dread like it's trying to make you feel guilty for enjoying it. The final jump scare is still the one that gets people.
Crucially, the original holds its sympathy in tension. Carrie's revenge is horrifying, yet you understand it, and the movie never tells you how to feel. Every later version either explains too much or rewards the audience for picking a side. The 2002 and 2013 versions follow the beats without the dread. The 1999 sequel changes the setting but not the impact. And Flanagan's series, for all its ambition and modern angle, takes eight hours to say what the original said in about 98 minutes.
Carrie may keep coming back, but that's the problem with a classic: the more they try to improve it, the more they prove why it didn't need improving.
