Carrie fever is gripping teenage girls – and exposing an uncomfortable truth about their lives | The Independent
Amazon's 2026 Carrie remake has become a hit with teenage girls, and this opinion piece reads that success as a response to current anxieties about female friendship, bullying, social media and powerlessness amid threats to women's rights. Drawing on a media lecturer who prefers the 1976 film (where the power belongs to Carrie, not to social media as villain), an author on teenage friendship, and quotes from 15-year-olds, the writer argues that girl-on-girl cruelty squanders power that would be better spent on alliances. She cites research linking close female bonds to better mental and physical health, and reads Carrie as showing that girls' power can be either destructive or positive depending on how they treat one another. The author runs The Respect Project, which works with adolescent relationships, and her piece ends as a plea for kindness over cruelty.