This 1970's Horror Classic Is Stephen King’s Highest-Ranked Film on Rotten Tomatoes

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Published Feb 22, 2026, 12:23 PM EST

Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He's watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th. Don't ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can't do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies.

Stephen King has more than earned his nickname "the master of horror." Not only has he written countless classic novels and short stories, but so many of them have been adapted into films that have become classics in their own right. Which one is the best is up for debate. Is it The Shining, Misery, IT, The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, or something else? The answer is up to you. What can't be debated, though, is which adaptation has the highest Rotten Tomatoes score from critics. For this, you have to go back to King's first-ever novel, which led to Brian De Palma's 1976 masterpiece, Carrie.

'Carrie' Has an Incredibly High Tomatometer Score

As of this writing, a whopping 68 Stephen King films are on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer. There are some real stinkers on there, with Graveyard Shift and several Children of the Corn entries sitting at 0%. Others don't do so well either. Maximum Overdrive might be a cult classic now, but only 14% of critics approved of King's lone directing effort. Going back to Carrie for a moment, The Rage: Carrie 2 is at 23% and the 2002 reboot is at 20%. The 2013 version of Carrie does a little better at 51%. Still, there are 29 other films higher on the critical approval list.

So where do the all-timers land? The Shining is recognized as perhaps the greatest horror movie ever made. On Rotten Tomatoes, however, at 84%, that's only good enough for the 11th spot. 2017's IT cracks the top 10, as do films you know would be on this list, like The Shawshank Redemption, Misery, and Stand by Me. Two other King adaptations from 2017, Gerald's Game and 1922, sit above 90%. Standing alone at the top, with a 94% Tomatometer, based on 82 reviews, is Carrie. This is much higher than the fan ranking Popcornmeter, which has a score of 77% based on over 250,000 ratings.

Critics Like Roger Ebert Raved About 'Carrie'

Carrie's Rotten Tomatoes score is built off of both newer and older reviews, which is fascinating to look at, as a new generation takes in a film now 50 years old. Do those who weren't even born (and maybe whose parents weren't around either) when Carrie came out look at it differently after decades of horror movies have done so much since? As it turns out, across different ages and genders, the consensus is the same: Carrie is a horror masterpiece.

The few bad reviews seem to have issues with the acting or De Palma's directing talent. Justin Brown of Medium Popcorn wasn't a fan because "the acting takes me out of the movie" and Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader argued that the director "can't keep track" of his ideas. A bigger outlet, Variety, gave Carrie a fresh rating, although their praise of calling it "modest but effective" won't knock your socks off.

Carrie gets a lot of perfect or near-perfect scores from many critics, including the biggest names out there. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker called it a "terrifying lyrical thriller." The Guardian, Empire Magazine, Slant Magazine, and Bloody Disgusting all gave it a perfect score. But what about the most famous film critic of them all? Roger Ebert was the go-to for movie reviews for decades, a name so prominent that he was often more popular than the film he was writing about. He had a love-hate relationship with horror (he loathed most slashers, for instance). When it came to Carrie, though, Ebert had nothing but great things to say. In his three-and-a-half star review, he called Carrie "absolutely spellbinding" and compared its shocking ending to the finale of Jaws, which had come out a year earlier. He raved about the focal point, saying that Carrie White is "a character we know and understand." It's what he said about it at the end, though, that helps put Carrie into the conversation of the best horror films ever made.

Is 'Carrie' the Best Stephen King Adaptation?

Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) looking scared in the shower in 'Carrie'

Carrie is a terrifying blend of what we know mixed with supernatural impossibilities. Stephen King was inspired to write his first novel by several true stories. The telekinesis aspect came from a LIFE magazine article he'd read which suggested teenage girls were more prone to have the ability. He combined that with a memory of seeing pink shower curtains in the girls' shower at a high school he was the janitor at in the summers of his youth. Those ideas were added to a girl he knew as a child who was constantly bullied, along with a neighbor so religious that she hung a crucifix on her wall. Stir it all up into one concoction and you get Carrie.

Roger Ebert was right about how amazing the last act of the film is. It's heartbreaking to see the pig's blood dumped on our poor protagonist, and it's terrifying to see Carrie enact her fiery revenge. At the same time, we're also cheering her on because we've spent so much time with this young woman and gotten to know her. Sissy Spacek pulls us in and makes what could have been an over-the-top character feel lifelike. She is real. She is the kid we knew who got picked on growing up. Maybe she's you.

Ebert wrote that Carrie is "a true horror story, not a manufactured one." This wasn't an old gothic horror movie, something Hammer Films or Vince Prince might put out with dark and stormy nights. It didn't exist in a fantasy world an audience could remove itself from. Carrie is reality and impossible to escape. As Ebert said at the end of his review of horror movies like this, "They develop their horrors out of the people they observe. That happens here, too. Does it ever." It's up for debate as to which Stephen King adaptation is the best, but it's easy to see why Carrie gets the most positive reviews.

Carrie is available to rent or buy on VOD services.