Like you, I received the news that horror supremo Mike Flanagan was working on a TV series based on Stephen King’s Carrie with confusion and an eye roll. I love Flanagan’s work—Netflix series Midnight Mass , The Fall of the House of Usher and The Haunting of Hill House are all utterly extraordinary—and his passion and understanding of why Stephen King’s books are special shone through in Gerald’s Game , The Life of Chuck , and even the peculiarly Kubrick-besotted Doctor Sleep . I also can’t wait to see what he does with The Dark Tower , especially after Nikolakj Arcel’s absymal 2017 attempt starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. But if Flanagan is going to adapt more of King’s work for television, why not books that have never been tried like Insomnia or Rose Madder , or those that were done atrociously like Needful Things and Dreamcatcher ?

But why Carrie ?…