Netflix's New "Carrie Meets Mean Girls" Thriller Is a Near-Perfect 8-Episode Binge

Published Nov 11, 2026, 3:00 AM EST Quinn Shephard’s Netflix series drops an exorcism into Bring It On Mean girls and mass hysteria make Netflix's The Body horror camp heaven Image: Netflix You should know if The Body is a show for you from the premise alone. After a botched dance-team initiation, a group of Catholic high school girls inspire a wave of mass hysteria in their small religious town — it may or may not be connected to the devil. Personally, it’s as if someone smushed all of my favorite keywords into one eight-episode Netflix series. Set in the aughts and dripping with Juicy Couture apparel, low-waisted jeans, and a bedazzled title card, The Body feels like a Zillennial take on The Devils, only gayer and with a peripheral interest in men. There’s less horror than promised, but man does it deliver memorable mean girls, dreamy dance routines, and AIM drama. The Body is, above all, a really good time. Created by Quinn Shephard (Under the Bridge), the series centers on three very different girls. Anya (Kristina Bogic) is popular and sweet, the co-captain of the Lions, her school’s dance team. She shares the title with her best friend, Elise (Sara Boustany), the mean to her nice. And then there’s Lisbeth (Geena Meszaros), a strange and lonely girl who’s the daughter of the town recluse (Louisa Krause). Her mother rarely leaves her bedroom, and when she does, it’s to deliver fanatic religious rants. Lisbeth and Anya cross paths after Lisbeth botches her audition for the dance team, which painfully features her doing the robot while the girls don’t even try to hide their snickers. Still, Anya can’t help but feel bad for Lisbeth, and does what any good girl would do: invites her to a party. Hosted on Halloween at an abandoned building where a group of nuns reportedly went crazy, the party becomes the setting for the dance team’s initiation ritual, where they plan to welcome Grace (Sofia Wylie) into the fold. She’s the team’s newest recruit and the niece of Father Franklin (Nnamdi Asomugha), the school’s distractingly handsome priest and headmaster. Image: Netflix You can see where this is all going. After Anya suggests ecstasy as a way to fold Grace into their ranks, things go wrong, and Grace starts feeling sick. Anya doesn’t want to call an ambulance and ruin her chances at college, so Lisbeth offers a steady hand and some guidance, sparking a tenuous bond that will shape the rest of the series. In the following episodes, rumors of what happened on Halloween night spread through the town, and hysteria takes hold. The girls are left juggling questions from parents and school officials, handling escalating infighting, and reckoning with their own crises of faith — all while they prepare for Regionals. Old tropes, new tricks One of the best parts of The Body is its many references. Shephard borrows archetypes and textures from films like Bring It On, Mean Girls, and White Chicks. Story-wise, there are clear shades of The Crucible and The Exorcist. The show’s cast of characters take these archetypes and complicate them. With dyed eyebrows and a sweet but alienating approach, Lisbeth feels like Needy from Jennifer’s Body with a dash of Brigitte from Ginger Snaps. Anya and Elise are clear successors to Bring It On’s Torrance and Missy, who raised a generation of queer viewers with their ridiculously charged friendship. But the great thing about The Body is that even though it depicts the aughts and the social concerns of the era, it’s made in 2026, allowing the writers to revisit these tropes and probe further. What if the gay subtext was text? What if we dropped Carrie White into the middle of Bring It On and threw in an exorcism? Image: Netflix If there’s one area where the show underdelivers, however, it's the horror. The Body is part of a modern trend where horror has become such a big tent that it’s hard to define. The show’s framing borrows liberally from religious horror, but it doesn’t really result in a scary experience. One sequence intercuts a séance where the girls try to purge their demons with a fumbling teenage sexual encounter. When an apparition manifests, it feels campy and not frightening. And while The Body has plenty of fun, it’s also weighty. In previous interviews, Shephard shared that she began writing the pilot the year she came out, with the show becoming a container for all of the shame and confusion that comes with the process. For the girls living through this story, the horror of being a teen, of trying to weave your way into a group of popular girls while feeling out of place, of verbalizing your sexuality, feel as dire as the Earth caving in. The stakes are real. For anyone who has lived through it and has the blessed benefit of distance, The Body feels tailor-made. The Body premieres on Netflix on Nov. 11.