How Mike Flanagan's Take on Carrie Upends the Tragedy of Stephen King's Horror Classic

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the finale of Carrie, now streaming.If you ever wished Stephen King's Carrie was actually a story about a telekinetic teenager getting whisked away from the violence and isolation of her sheltered small-town life to join a secret society of fellow psychic outcasts, then the ending of Prime Video's new eight-episode Carrie series may appeal to you. But if you were hoping for an adaptation that more meaningfully captures the tragic finality of King's 1974 novel, showrunner Mike Flanagan's open-ended take on the horror classic may leave you feeling a bit frustrated.Over the course of the past decade, Flanagan has made a name for himself as one of the genre's leading auteurs with a steady output of Halloween season Netflix horror series, which ranged in quality from the superb Haunting of Hill House (a modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson's acclaimed 1959 novel) and Midnight Mass (an original work in the vein of King's Salem's Lot) to the disappointing Midnight Club (a remix of the the YA horror novels of Christopher Pike). Prior to taking on Carrie, Flanagan also received high praise from King for his film adaptations of Gerald's Game (a book ...