A short, spoiler-free rant on Mike Flanagan's Carrie. If you've seen it, you'll understand. -------- Carrie is not a feminist story. Carrie is not about female empowerment. Carrie is not about self-empowerment, either. If it were, it would not have ended as it did, in the book and films, because Carrie, even though she didnt feel like it, also had a choice to do better for herself. Carrie is, fundamentally, a tragedy. No one is in the right. It is a catharsis, on the one hand, for us all because we have all been wronged or bullied in some way. It is also a look at just how ugly our responses to being wronged can be. Carrie is a horror specifically because we at once feel for her and understand her, but we also understamd how there really is no justification for what happens at the end. There is no real freedom in revenge. Carrie becomes a slave to her anger and, as iconic as the original ending of Carrie is, it is both a warning to bullies as it is a warning to the vengeful. Flanagan flubs this ending in ways I can't give away, but they are a spectacular miscalculation. However, even prior to the ending, it is made clear that Carrie is being portrayed in this series as some feminist icon, or some proxy for female liberation. In my opinion, Flanagan deeply, deeply misunderstands that not all stories about angry women are stories about female liberation. Flanagan, fundamentally, does not understand the story of Carrie.