As Trevor Decker News has been following since the first trailer dropped, Mike Flanagan’s Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video, and one of the most compelling things about the eight-episode series isn’t just what’s on screen. It’s who’s behind the camera.
Every episode Flanagan didn’t direct himself was helmed by a woman: Kate Siegel, Axelle Carolyn, Hiromi Kamata, and Kyra Sedgwick. For a story that has always been about what happens when a young woman’s power is underestimated and abused, that’s a deliberate choice worth talking about.
Siegel, who has collaborated with Flanagan across The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, brings a deep familiarity with his storytelling language. Carolyn, Kamata, and Sedgwick each add their own perspective to a narrative Flanagan has reimagined for the social media era, where Carrie’s humiliation plays out not just in a school gymnasium but across viral posts and online cruelty that follows her everywhere.
The series also introduces the concept of the TK gene, connecting Carrie to a lineage of powerful women who came before her. It’s a mythology expansion that gives the directing choices an additional layer of meaning: women telling the story of women discovering what they’re capable of.
Flanagan has spoken about wanting to humanize characters who have historically been presented as simply monstrous, looking at the choices that lead to the story’s tragic outcome rather than treating it as inevitable. Having women behind the camera for those episodes brings an essential perspective to that approach, particularly for Margaret White, played by Samantha Sloyan as a more complicated figure than the religious zealot of earlier adaptations.
Summer H. Howell leads the cast as Carrie White, the 15-year-old navigating public school for the first time after a sheltered upbringing. The series is streaming now on Prime Video.
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