5 Best TV Shows Like Carrie

This article contains discussions of addiction, child abuse, mental health, and suicide.

Stephen King's debut novel "Carrie," which was first published in 1974, has been the subject of a handful of adaptations — especially the famous 1976 film directed by Brian de Palma that casts Sissy Spacek as the titular high school outcast. Now, modern horror master Mike Flanagan, who has also adapted a handful of King properties and other classics, is offering up his own take on Carrie White's bloody story in the form of a miniseries for Amazon Prime Video.

Just as a refresher, the story of "Carrie" centers around, well, the titular Carrie — a painfully shy high school student who finds herself mocked by her peers and publicly humiliated when she gets her period for the very first time. (Her religious and oppressive mother, Margaret, also takes a cruel approach to counseling her daughter through this important and formative time.) While some of her classmates feel bad for Carrie — like Sue Snell, who offers up her own boyfriend Tommy as Carrie's prom date — others want to punish her after they're also punished for their bullying, and you're probably familiar with the ensuing gambit involving a bucket of pig's blood being dumped all over Carrie's head as she accepts the crown as prom queen. Driven to near-madness, Carrie utilizes her telekinesis to exact her revenge, and the bloodbath begins.

With Summer H. Howell as Carrie, Samantha Sloyan as Margaret, Siena Agudong as Sue, Joel Oulette as Tommy, and Alison Thornton and Josie Totah as mean girls Christine "Chris" Hargensen and Tina Blake, the "Carrie" miniseries seems poised to take the small screen by storm. So what should you watch after you're finished with "Carrie?" We've got some ideas.

If you're looking for a dark, edgy drama centered around teenage girls but want slightly less supernatural stuff after "Carrie," give "Yellowjackets," the smash Showtime hit, a try. (Note that we said slightly less supernatural stuff; there still are some spooky elements at play here.) Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, "Yellowjackets," which premiered in 2021, straddles two timelines — and for the purposes of this list, we are going to set aside the adult timeline that features incredible stars like Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis. Instead, we'll hone in on the teen timeline, set in the 1990s as a soccer team's worth of girls (and their coach and a few assorted others) end up stranded in the Canadian wilderness thanks to a devastating plane crash as they travel to an important game.

With charismatic performers like Sophie Nélisse, Sophie Thatcher, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Liv Hewson, Ella Purnell, and Samantha Hanratty — as Shauna Shipman, Natalie Scatorccio, Taissa "Tai" Turner, Vanessa "Van" Palmer, Jackie Taylor, and Misty Quigley, respectively — the teen timeline of "Yellowjackets" is just as thrilling as the one that features all of those established actors, especially as the girls discover potentially dark forces at work in the endless woods. Like "Carrie," "Yellowjackets" is unsettling, disturbing, bizarre, and shows you just how far teenage girls will go under duress. (Honestly, Carrie White would fit in a little too well with the titular team of Yellowjackets.) There's no question that works like "Carrie" helped inspired the darkness of "Yellowjackets," making it a great follow-up to the Amazon miniseries.

Out of all the entries on this list, the tragically canceled Netflix series "I Am Not Okay with This" has the most in common with "Carrie," because both stories focus on a struggling young girl trying to keep her dangerous telekinesis powers under control. Based on Charles Foreman's graphic novel of the same name and created by Jonathan Entwistle and Christy Hall, "I Am Not Okay with This," which ran its only season in early 2020, stars Sophia Lillis Sydney "Syd" Novak, who's 17-years-old and lives with her mother Maggie (Kathleen Rose Perkins) and brother Liam (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong) after the tragic death of Syd and Liam's father and Maggie's husband, who died by suicide before the narrative begins. Frustrated with her family's overall unwillingness to deal with the tragic nature of her father's passing, Syd starts keeping a diary at the suggestion of her guidance counselor Ms. Cappriotti (Patricia Scanlon), but also realizes that she might have telekinetic powers when she gives her best friend Dina's (Sofia Bryant) boyfriend a nosebleed out of jealousy. (Syd isn't jealous of the relationship, per se; she's in love with Dina.) 

As it turns out, Syd can't control her telekinetic powers, which emerge whenever she feels a particularly strong emotion. Again, there's no question that Stephen King's "Carrie" was an enormous influence on "I Am Not Okay with This," and while it's a shame that we only got one season of this funny, weird, and delightful show led beautifully by Willis, it's still definitely worth watching. Unfortunately, though, it does end on a cliffhanger ... so just be aware of that going in!

The HBO adaptation of Gillian Flynn's unbelievably disturbing debut novel "Sharp Objects," which was helmed by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" veteran Marti Noxon and directed by the late, great Jean-Marc Vallée, ostensibly focuses on Amy Adams' troubled reporter Camille Preaker, who returns to her seemingly cursed hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri to investigate the disappearances and murders of two teenage girls. Camille, who struggles with an addiction to alcohol and regularly self-harms, is the central protagonist ... but because the story is about her quest to find out who killed two young women, "Sharp Objects" is also, in essence, a dark teen drama. Not only is Camille mourning the loss of her younger sister, Marian (Sophia Lillis, again!), but when she returns to Wind Gap and reunites with her controlling Southern Belle mother Adora Crellin (a magnificent Patricia Clarkson), she also gets to know her younger half-sister Amma Crellin (Eliza Scanlon). As Camille worries about Amma's safety and attempts to uncover what happened to Ann Nash and Natalie Keene, we watch as Amma's true nature reveals itself.

We won't spoil the incredibly twisted and jarring ending of "Sharp Objects" here, but just know going in that "Sharp Objects" has a lot more in common with the general narrative of "Carrie" than you might initially assume. (Scanlon and Lillis, the latter of whom are seen in flashback, prove that they're exceptionally talented teenage performers, and there's even a guest arc from a young, pre-"Euphoria" Sydney Sweeney as Camille's roommate in a psychiatric institution.) If you haven't watched "Sharp Objects" yet, buckle up; you're in for a wild ride.

When Mike Flanagan adapted the classic Shirley Jackson horror novel "The Haunting of Hill House" for Netflix back in 2018, he established himself as the go-to horror guy for a new generation and set himself up to adapt several more high-profile adaptations (which he did, thanks to other Stephen King fare like "Gerald's Game" and "Doctor Sleep" as well as other "Haunting" projects like "The Haunting of Bly Manor" and the Edgar Allan Poe take "The Fall of the House of Usher"). In "The Haunting of Hill House," Flanagan assembles an all-star cast of adult performers like Victoria Pedretti, Kate Siegel, Carla Gugino, Michiel Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen to play the older versions of the Crain family, but when we flash back to their childhoods, we learn what happened in 1992 that led to the Crains leaving their massive and mysterious mansion behind.

Paxton Singleton, Julian Hilliard, Lulu Wilson, Violet McGraw, and McKenna Grace make up the core of the young cast — portraying young Steven, Luke, Shirley, Eleanor ("Nell"), Theodora ("Theo"), played respectively by Huisman, Jackson-Cohen, Reaser, Pedretti, and Siegel — and their performances are top-notch as they grapple with the insidious hauntings that, well, haunt the titular Hill House. If you really love Flanagan's adaptation of "Carrie," you should definitely check out the show that made him one of the most sought-after names in horror, but be warned: "The Haunting of Hill House" is, without question, the scariest show on this list by a long shot. Keep an eye out for all the hidden ghosts, if you're brave enough!

You've probably, by this point, heard of "Stranger Things," the 1980s nostalgia bomb created by the Duffer brothers that became an immediate hit for Netflix when it premiered in 2016. While the show suffered from ... diminishing returns as the seasons continued (the huge gaps between them certainly didn't help matters), it's impossible to ignore the juggernaut that was "Stranger Things," which centered around a group of kids — Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) — who discover a young girl cryptically named Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) wandering around outside of Hawkins. Crucially for the purposes of this list, Eleven has dangerous and supercharged telekinetic powers, which she can harness at will but which also give her a nosebleed in the process.

Like "I Am Not Okay with This," there's a pretty direct line between "Carrie" and "Stranger Things" (the show, overall, owes several debts to Stephen King's body of work). As for "Carrie," it's streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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