Her First Day of School

October tends to bring out the horror, with a variety of new, scary projects finding their homes in the spooky season. For American audiences especially, the biggest name in horror is Stephen KingRising to fame with the release of his first book, Carrie, Stephen King is one of the most prolific, and most successful, American authors (in any genre, not just horror)., the famous author who has been working in the genre since 1974, with the release of his first published novel, Carrie. King’s works are regular fixtures of the Silver Screen and television, and there have been multiple adaptations of Carrie (the 1976 version plus its loose sequel, as well as the 2002 television film and the 2013 version). And now we can add another version of the story onto the pile.

Although, in fairness, this version does come with some clout behind it. Along with the King name attached, as this is a very direct adaptation of the original novel, the production also comes from Mike Flanagan, the horror writer / director, who has spent the better part of the last decade and a half making a name for himself as a go-too horror savant. This includes multiple Stephen King adaptations (Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck). Having Flanagan’s name on a new Carrie automatically gives it prestige that the project might otherwise have lacked.

Because, let’s be clear, it’s not as if the world needed yet another Carrie adaptation. With the multiple versions we’ve had already, it’s become clear that the 1976 version does a solid, respectable job at adapting the story for the screen while honing in on what works best about Carrie White and her travails. Any adaptation has to prove not only as interesting as that film but also have a hook that makes us want to watch it instead of the solid version we already have. That’s what both the 2002 and 2013 versions really failed at: giving us a reason to need a new version of the material. Can Flanagan do what the others before him failed at?

If this first episode of the new season (which has dropped all as one big binge bundle on Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader.) is any indication, the answer is both yes and no. The key trick that the episode pulls is that it updates and modernizes the story of Carrie White, bringing in computers and cellphones and modern fears, all while still keeping the basic details of Carrie’s life the same. Carrie (Summer H. Howell) grew up as a shut-in, living under her religious zealot parents, before her father died, leaving her in the sole care of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). When the city discovers that Carrie is not in the governmental system and has never been to school, and that Margaret has no income at all, they force Margaret to let the girl go to school, and that is basically where the trouble really begins.

The episode, titled “First Period”, tells you where the story is heading. Carrie goes to high school, coming in as a sophomore, and it’s hard for her to fit in. She sort of befriends Sue Snell (Siena Agudong), a senior with whom she shares homeroom, but this also puts her under the gaze of mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), who finds ways to pick and bully the naive Carrie. And with modern technology that means Chris isn’t just yelling at Carrie and picking on her, she’s also taking pictures and recording videos as well. And when Carrie inevitably has her first period and doesn’t understand what’s going on, well… that’s where the episode ends and the story is going to take off.

As we can see, Flanigan has kept the bones of the story the same even as he’s fleshed out the length of the tale. We spend a fair bit of time simply learning about Carrie’s home life and seeing what she has to deal with. Her father, Ralph White (Tahmoh Penikett), was a construction worker who died on the job site, and he kept his women locked up at home, out of the eyes of the community. They’re religious doomsday preppers who expected that some day the world would come crashing down under its sin and villainy, and yet they somehow managed to raise a sweet and kind girl who just wants to experience life.

But one major twist that Flanigan makes is that he opens the story not with Carrie, or her family, or that fateful first period, but instead in the aftermath of Carrie’s carnage at prom. As this is the fourth adaptation of Carrie we’ve seen, Flanigan lets us know, right off the bat, where the story is going. There’s no need to hide it or pretend otherwise. Carrie is going to get covered in pig blood, and she’s going to use her telekinetic powers to rain hellfire (quite literally) on the town. We all know this is coming, so instead of building to it, Flanigan opens with scenes of destruction before bouncing back to the beginning. The carnage is coming, but now we can watch the inevitable play out while wishing it wasn’t the case.

I’m not sure this would work if it weren’t for the open and honest performance from Summer H. Howell. Since we already know where this story is going (even if the series didn’t open with shots of the carnage), we’re ready to pre-judge Carrie as the monster of the story. But Carrie here is a sweet, kind, and pure soul who really doesn’t want to cause any trouble. There isn’t a bad bone in her body, not yet anyway, and you wish that someone could come along that would protect her from what’s coming even as the dread of the inevitable slowly builds. Howell gives Carrie everything she needs to be a protagonist you can care about, and that makes the jumping around along the timeline work better simply because it’s contrasting the carnage against this sweet and kind girl. That helps this first episode a lot.

Also interesting is that, unlike in other versions of this story, Margaret White isn’t presented as a villain. Yes, she’s a religious zealot and, yes, her ideas are kooky as hell. But it’s clear in this first episode that she loves her daughter and, in her own way, just wants what’s best for her. The relationship is controlling and abusive, but the way Samantha Sloyan plays Carrie’s mother gives you insight into the woman. She’s not a cartoonish monster (unlike in the 1976 version), but a protective (if religiously crazy) woman trying to do right. It will likely still play out that Margaret goes off the deep end and inevitably pushes Carrie too far, but it feels like that’s going to be a slow descent into madness here instead of having Margaret start evil and stay evi. I appreciate that a lot as it adds needed nuance to her character.

The part that I’m less happy about is how Flanigan seems to be building out the universe of this story for future seasons. The writer / director has been up front about the fact that he has a three season plan for Carrie that goes much farther than the bounds of the original novel. A scene late in this premiere episode establishes that there are other psychics out in the world, and that they are somehow working together to detect and find their own kind. Carrie has a few small incidents this episode – an Active Shooter Drill causes her to blast a television, knocking it off a wall, and then a bad dream causes a crack in her bedroom window, all before she sends out a real blast of power during the period scare that caps the episode – and it’s these blasts that attracts the attention of… well, whoever is searching. We don’t have that answer yet, but the whole setup feels weird.

I found the introduction of this thread to be off-putting within the bounds of the story. Carrie is about a girl driven to madness by bullies, and while those elements are here in this version, the idea that some kind of, what, School for Gifted Children is out there, looking to collect here, feels like it comes from a completely different story. You know, because it does since that wasn’t in the original novel. Flanigan has a plan, and while I generally like what the creator cooks up, this is a plotline that feels tacked on in this first episode and I don’t know that it’s really going to blend well with the rest of the story. I suppose that’s something we’re going to have to watch for with the rest of the season.

It all leads to a series premiere that makes me wonder what we’re really in for. As a fleshed out and expanded version of Carrie, this new series gets a lot of things right. The casting is solid, the production values are good, and the basic changes and updates to the main story feel like they help the story instead of hindering it. But then you throw in the other psychics and the desire to expand this into a three season affair and… yeah, I just don’t know how to feel about that at all. This first episode is about ninety percent perfect, but that last ten percent has me worried that it could all come tumbling down faster than a high school gymnasium set on fire by an angry psychic. Time will tell in that regard…