Mike Flanagan’s new adaptation of Carrie is both a modernized take on the Stephen King novel that builds out the universe in fascinating ways and puts several aspects of the book on screen that other adaptations have not touched. If you’ve only seen Brian De Palma’s 1976 movie, you might not realize that some changes aren’t changes at all. Curious as to what the actual differences are between Carrie the show and Carrie the book?
As a fan of both, let’s get into it. The bare bones of the story are intact: Carrie White is a sheltered teenager whose religious mother, Margaret White, keeps her on a tight leash. When she gets her period for the first time in the school locker room, she thinks she’s bleeding to death and panics.
The other girls, lead by a notorious popular bully Christine “Chris” Hargensen, make fun of her ignorance. This gets Chris banned from prom and she exacts revenge by arranging for Carrie to be voted queen and dumping a bucket of pig’s blood on her head in front of everyone. Carrie’s date is Tommy Ross, boyfriend of the reformed bully Sue Snell.
Little do any of them know, Carrie has telekinetic powers and unleashes a violent hell on her classmates and the whole town. Since this is a series and not a novella, the story fleshes out a lot of characters, especially when it comes to the teachers and their parents in Chamberlain, Maine. Carrie and Margaret’s mother/daughter relationship is still abusive, but more complicated and grey than it is in the book.
We see more of Chris and Sue’s home lives as well. That firecracker incident, however? The teacher played by Rahul Kohli and his fairly significant storyline is totally new Flanagan invention.
So is Emaline, a fellow outcast who befriends Carrie at school, knows her supernatural secret, and helps her practice honing her skills—but we’ll get to her in a minute. Let’s start at the beginning... In the book: Stephen King’s Carrie is what’s called epistolary, meaning that it breaks up the narrative with fictional newspaper articles, court transcripts, sections from autobiographies, and encyclopedia entries that foreshadow the Black Prom massacre before it happens.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
