Carrie (2026) Spoilerific Review + An Interview With Mike Flanagan

Mike Muncer (0:00)

This episode is sponsored by Insidious Out of the Further. I've always been a huge fan of the Insidious franchise, and the sixth entry is now available to buy and rent at home. When Gemma, a young mother, discovers that she can travel into the further, she also discovers something far more dangerous, the ability to pull the inhabitants out into the real world. Insidious Out of the Further is available to buy or rent and watch at home on Amazon Prime Video, Sky Store and Apple TV.

Welcome back to The Evolution of Horror. My name is Mike Muncer and as ever I am your host. Now usually on this podcast we're looking at the history and the evolution of the horror genre one sub-genre at a time. We're going to be back in the new year for our twelfth season of the podcast focusing on childhood nightmares. But we're bringing you a little bonus episode this week because well, because it's October, it's spooky season, it's our Christmas. So we thought why not drop a little bonus episode. Now it is October, it is spooky season and that usually means it's time for a new TV show from Mike Flanagan. Mike Flanagan is back with his, is this his fifth, I think, TV show now? An adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie, which is available to watch right now on Prime Video, all eight episodes. This is of course an adaptation of the classic Stephen King story, the story that was once made into a Brian De Palma movie in 1976 Mike Flanagan has given it the Flanagan treatment and extended it and modernized it and updated it into something very, very different. So I have already watched all eight episodes and what you're going to hear this week is a spoilerific deep dive discussion of the whole series. Later in the episode, I will be joined by Becky Darke and we will be dissecting that show from beginning to end. But first of all, here is a little chat I had with the man himself, Mike Flanagan. We sat down and had a quick 15 minute spoiler free conversation about Carrie, about his career and about some of his upcoming projects, including a new version of The Mist and of course, a new Exorcist movie. So, please enjoy my conversation with the brilliant Mike Flanagan.

Hello Mike Flanagan, how are you doing?

Mike Flanagan (2:29)

I'm really well, how are you?

Mike Muncer (2:30)

I'm really good. How long have you been sort of wanting to take on this particular story and what's been your own relationship with King's original novel?

Mike Flanagan (2:37)

Honestly, this was not on my list of King properties that I was eager to try to tackle.

I do have that list and Carrie was never one that I thought needed to be re-approached. I thought De Palma nailed it.

So it was brought to me, it was Amazon who initially brought the project to my attention and said, what do you think about Carrie as a TV show? My first reaction was why? It's been done and done and done. But I kept thinking about it and I really couldn't get it out of my mind. I think the thing that changed the whole conversation for me was that at the time my oldest son was about to start high school. I was thinking a lot about the world he was about to step into. And how different that world was from the 90s when I was in high school. And how different that world was from the 70s when Steve was writing this book. And suddenly the question kind of changed. It wasn't, oh, do we want to do Carrie again? It became, no, we don't want to do Carrie again. But I think there's a wonderful reason to do Carrie now and to do it differently. And then everything started to kind of fall into place. And I found myself growing, to my great surprise, very excited about it. So I brought it to Steve and I said, well, they're asking about Carrie for TV. And he said, why? It's been done. No, leave her alone. I said, no, I agree with you.

I don't think we do it again. I don't think there's any reason to. But I have kind of a new way in that requires a lot of changes to execute. But I think there's something very timely and very important and something really worth telling here. I laid out the whole season and kind of the fundamental changes we'd make to the characters. He was very excited. He said, actually, this is really fresh. This is really new. This could be really fun. This could be really worthwhile.