Since 2013, composers Andy Grush and Taylor Stewart, known collectively as the Newton Brothers, have collaborated with filmmaker Mike Flanagan on his many explorations into the realm of horror. Beginning with the film Oculus, the new Prime Video series Carrie marks the trio’s thirteenth time working together. And anyone who’s heard one of the Newton Brothers’ scores in a Flanagan work knows there can be nothing unlucky about this thirteenth collaboration.
Flanagan’s reimagining of Stephen King’s classic book, Carrie, is a high school horror that has been adeptly modernized for the technology generation. Carrie (Summer H. Howell) is still a young girl horribly bullied by her classmates, but the medium of a miniseries allows Flanagan to more fully explore the ins and outs of the high school experience.
Courtesy of The Newton Brothers
This is not the first time the Newton Brothers have been asked to put music to teenage life. Their first feature score was for a 2010 film, High School, with a strong emphasis on “high.” A stoner comedy is a far cry from Carrie, but some things about high school never change.
“I hadn’t thought about that in forever,” laughs Stewart.
“It’s funny that you bring up High School,” Grush picks up. “It’s such a different experience than what Carrie is. I will laugh about that even later this afternoon. That’s a great call.”
“All things considered, though, high school is a time in life where things are a bit off the rails for everyone, just in different ways,” continues Grush. “Everyone’s a puppy dog with huge paws and they’re tripping over themselves in one way or another. Even someone like Chris. I’m not standing up for Chris at all, but even Chris is finding her way. I would say she found the wrong way.”
Chris (Alison Thornton) is one of Carrie’s main bullies at school. In the original book and the earlier adaptations, the audience doesn’t get much insight into who Chris is or what her life is like outside of school. Flanagan’s take on the story shows that Chris’ actions, while not condonable, are explainable. No kid bullies another with such hatred if they haven’t seen that sort of emotion at home.
Courtesy of Prime Video
King’s famous book has been adapted three times for the big screen and one time for the stage, and Flanagan’s adaptation marks the first television series version of the story. The Newton Brothers are no strangers to working on a project with a long legacy and protective fans. They’ve scored other Flanagan-made King adaptations and contributed to the Marvel Cinematic Universe on two occasions. When approaching Carrie, they came from a place of reverence for what King created.
“I remember seeing the original Carrie and I loved it. I love Stephen King in general,” recalls Stewart. “Working with Mike Flanagan for all these years, we’ve been lucky enough to see how he works. How he takes things, adapts them, and changes them. The fact that he agreed to do Carrie having so much respect and love for the property, I knew we were in for something special. I knew we were probably not going to go down the path of the original because it’s been done and it’s been done so well. That led to the conversations of how we wanted to bring this to today and modernize this story.”
“We deep-dove on all of the Carries,” explains Grush. “Whether we want to reference it or not, I think it’s always good to make sure that, at least as composers, we have a fresh sense of what was in the past and to be able to pull from it when necessary.”
Courtesy of Prime Video
In an early episode of the series, Carrie is given a t-shirt out of the lost and found. It’s the first time she’s been given a piece of contemporary clothing and a far cry from the homemade clothes she makes from bedspreads and curtains. The shirt is of a band called Haute & Freddy, and this moment is a bit of a wink from Flanagan, who was deeply inspired by the song “Shy Girl.” The Newton Brothers were tasked with creating an instrumental version of the up-beat song, and the duo has crafted something deeply emotional with just a piano.
“Before the album was even released, Mike got an early version of the song. He’d ended up loving the track so much. I think the lyrics, the music, the excitement, the innocence, and the usefulness of it really, really landed for him,” recalls Stewart.
“He put it into the script and found places to touch on that emotion. That’s the path we went down. It really aligned with Summer and her performance,” says Stewart. “We were talking with Mike about the placements of the song, how to do it, and Andy had some really good ideas about how to delicately play it. When you play something so simple, there’s this urge to want to add to things.”
“As musicians and composers, it’s very uncomfortable, at least I think for most of us, to do something so bare and so naked, because it really just has to stand on its own in the scene. We had to do that in a lot of stuff we’ve done with Mike, and there are moments of that in this show particularly,” explains Stewart.
Courtesy of Prime Video
“We held back on the full version of it until the last episode,” notes Grush. “Even the full iteration of the piano variation of it. We don’t play all the notes. It’s about giving you the sense of what’s there. That moment in the last episode with Summer dancing. It’s just incredible. It works so well. It was Mike’s idea to hear what it would sound like if we did a piano version of ‘Shy Girl.’”
In all of his work, Flanagan has an unwavering dedication to sincerity. He’s not afraid to be earnest and honest, not just in terms of his writing, but in all aspects of the production.
“He doesn’t want any tricks,” continues Grush. “It’s very sincere. It’s vulnerable. You feel that at every level. I think it’s a really wonderful thing that he has. It’s his superpower.”
Initially, Carrie was thought to be a standalone miniseries, but the show was recently renewed for a second season. Flanagan explained in a press statement that he had “imagined a story that goes far beyond the prom” from the beginning. When the Newton Brothers return for the second season, they also want to grow bigger and better.
“We haven’t really read anything or talked to Mike about the plans,” explains Stewart. “We know a little bit of stuff, but very, very, very little. The score will be determined by where the story expands. I can see the score being more present in the show. It’s hard to say right now without knowing. There’s a lot of landscape for this story. It feels like a Stephen King universe expanding. I’d be guessing at this point, but yeah, we’ll see where that leads musically.”
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