Mike Flanagan's Carrie Has Its First Clip Out, and the Mother Is Already the Problem

Carrie is Stephen King's 1974 novel about a bullied teenager who discovers she can move things with her mind, and Mike Flanagan is making a new series of it. The first clip is out, and Dread Central reports that it opens with Carrie slamming a door on her mum. If that sounds like an ordinary afternoon, you have clearly never met Margaret White.

For anyone who has never met the story, here is the quick version. It was King's first published novel, and it is told through fictional newspaper clippings, magazine pieces and official reports, so it reads a bit like a case file. Carrie is painfully shy, she is bullied at school, and it turns out she can move things without touching them. That is not a helpful thing to discover in a school full of people who have decided you are a joke, and it is where the trouble starts. Her mother Margaret is a religious fanatic who makes a house feel like the waiting room for a sermon nobody asked for. Plenty of you grew up with Brian De Palma's 1976 film, and I know it has a lot of fans, so I want to be fair to it as well as to the new thing.

Why the door is the moment that got me

De Palma's film gave the story its best-known faces. Sissy Spacek played Carrie, and Piper Laurie played Margaret, a performance that earned Laurie an Oscar nomination. When Kimberly Peirce remade it in 2013, Julianne Moore took on Margaret and Chloë Grace Moretz played Carrie. Both versions leaned hard on the bond between mother and daughter, and that is why Margaret is the real engine of the story, more than the telekinesis. The prom scene gets all the posters, but the house is where the story really lives.

A closed door in a horror story is always about control. Much of the book has Carrie's life decided for her, by classmates, by teachers and by her mother, so seeing her be the one doing the shutting is a small jolt. It tells you the balance has moved before anybody has said a word. I would take a quiet shot like that over a loud jump scare, although I will still shriek at a jump scare regardless.

What the clip does not tell us

I am going to be strict here, because this site does not guess. From what Dread Central reports, the first clip shows Carrie slamming a door on her mum. That is as far as I can honestly go. I have no cast list for the new series, no release date and no platform to give you, and if I made any of them up it would be a lie with a bow on it. If you want the detail, the Dread Central write-up linked above is the place to check, not a blog's memory of a trailer.

There is also a sensible reason to keep this short. A first clip is built to make you ask questions, and the questions are the point. The people making it want you to wonder what happens after the door shuts, and I would rather you wonder than have the answer handed to you on a plate.

Why Flanagan is worth watching with this one

Flanagan has spent much of the last decade making slow, family-shaped horror. The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher all treat the people inside the house as the real problem, and sometimes as the real monsters. That is exactly the ground Carrie stands on. Her powers are the spectacle, but the damage starts at home, long before anyone at school notices. Flanagan has never been shy about showing families hurting each other. If the door is any guide, he has not changed his mind about where the horror sits.

The thing I am nervous about is the thing everyone is nervous about with a remake. The 1976 film is a hard act to follow, and the 2013 version did not settle the argument for everyone. Flanagan has a lot to live up to, and a lot of readers who will be sitting on their sofas with very firm opinions. Good. I like that.

Where to start if you have never seen it

If you are coming to Carrie fresh, my honest advice is to read the book first, then watch De Palma's film, then decide whether the new series earns its place on your watchlist. The book is quicker than you think, and it is far sharper about what it feels like to be the kid nobody sits with at lunch. The film gives you the faces. The new series gets to take its own shot at the story.

I will probably rewatch De Palma's film before anything new lands, because that is how I like to come at these. Watching the old one first makes every change in the new one stand out, and that is half the fun.

So here is my question, and I want proper answers in the comments. Which version got you first: the book, De Palma's film or the 2013 remake? Tell me, and I will put the best of them at the top of my list for the next dark night in.