Flanagan makes horror the way other people make family dramas, and the ghosts arrive late and stand at the back. When he keeps them quiet he is as good as television horror gets; when he lets his characters explain themselves, the fear drains out.
Fi1m perspective
Somewhere behind the talking there is usually a figure. A shape on the stairs while a child chatters. A face in a doorway nobody uses. Mike Flanagan puts it at the back of the frame and does not cut to it, and more than once we did not see it until the second viewing. Nothing jumps. He has said as much himself: "I hate jump scares. I really hate them." The camera waits, and the waiting is what does it.
He started small, with Absentia (2011), which he wrote, directed and cut, and Oculus (2013), a mirror and a family coming apart, which is the shape he has kept ever since. Then a run of features, Hush, Gerald's Game (2017) and Doctor Sleep (2019), two of them from Stephen King, and then television, where the extra hours suited him: The Haunting of Hill House (2018), Bly Manor (2020), Midnight Mass (2021), The Midnight Club (2022) and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023). The subjects barely change. Grief, drink, a house, a family that has not spoken since the thing happened. The ghosts stand for something and he is never shy about telling us what.
Hill House is the one to start with. It throws out most of Shirley Jackson's novel and keeps the house, and it is a family drama for long stretches before it remembers to frighten anyone, which is why the frights work when they come. Michael Fimognari shoots the place in browns and blacks and leaves the corners unlit. Twice we were properly frightened, both times by things that moved slowly, and the tall figure in the hat coming down a corridor without touching the floor kept us awake after the episode had finished. The sixth episode, 'Two Storms', plays out in a handful of unbroken takes with the past arriving inside the same camera movement, and it is the best hour he has made. Henry Thomas, Carla Gugino, Kate Siegel and Katie Parker turn up in project after project, and they know his rhythm, which is slow, and his weakness, which is words.
Because the words are the trouble. Hill House talks too much at its end, and the complaint most often made about Midnight Mass is the monologues, people sitting by a fire and saying what they have understood, at length, while the ghost waits outside. Flanagan writes his scripts as dramas first and adds the horror afterwards, and it shows in both directions: the people are real, and they have opinions about death that they want to share. Sometimes it lands. Often we found ourselves wishing the figure at the back of the frame would take a step forward and shut everybody up.
Next is Carrie (2026), King again. We will be watching the back of the frame, and hoping the speeches are short.
Biography
Mike Flanagan is an American filmmaker who writes, directs and edits horror films and television series. Born on 20 May 1978 in Salem, Massachusetts, he is the founder of Red Room Pictures and has worked extensively with Netflix and Amazon Studios.
He created, wrote, directed and edited the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), and has directed feature films including Oculus (2013), Hush (2016), Gerald's Game (2017) and Doctor Sleep (2019). Flanagan is developing the miniseries Carrie (2026) for Amazon Prime Video, on which he serves as creator, writer and director, and wrote the screenplay for the film Clayface (2026). He is married to actress Kate Siegel, who has appeared in many of his projects.
