The Big Picture
Mike Flanagan’s journey from crowdfunding films to helming Hollywood franchises shows his talent for creating quality horror films and series.
Flanagan’s work mixes the terrors of the night with the human condition, exploring trauma while delivering compelling stories.
Each project by Flanagan, from
Absentia
to
Midnight Mass
, showcases his ability to craft lasting, haunting experiences for horror fans.
In just a decade, Mike Flanagan turned from a wannabe filmmaker to one of the most influential voices in contemporary horror. Flanagan’s first feature film, Absentia, had to be crowdfunded to see the light of day, but now Flanagan keeps signing big-budget contracts to produce his movies and TV shows, with an enviable collection of successes in his career. That’s the most challenging part of ranking Flanagan’s work, as there’s not a single lousy production in the filmmaker’s history. Sure, some of Flanagan’s films and series hit harder than others, having a lasting effect that’ll forever haunt our sleepless nights. Some projects can also be flawed, unable to give fruition to Flanagan’s ambitious storytelling for one reason or another. Nevertheless, Flanagan has been, so far, incapable of delivering something that we couldn’t recommend to horror fans.
Ranking all of Mike Flanagan’s films and TV shows, then, is less about creating a distinction between the good and the bad than pointing out in which productions the filmmaker was better able to mix the terrors of the night with the aches of the human condition. So, the following ranking has the ambitious task of evaluating how each of Flanagan’s films and series craft a cohesive experience while also using horror to explore trauma. While it’s perfectly fine to disagree with some of the ranking positions, we’ll try to justify each entry, aware that all of these films and series deserve to be appreciated anyway. Let’s get to it then; it’s time to wake some ghosts.
12 ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ (2016)
There’s not a single redeeming quality in 2014’s Ouija. From planning to execution, Ouija fails even to be a generic horror movie, as it has inconsistent pacing, awful character development, and bland scares. However, with a box office of more than $100 million, a sequel — or in this case, prequel — to Ouija was bound to happen. Lucky for us, Flanagan was chosen to helm 2016’s Ouija: Origin of Evil, a prequel film that delivers one of the most impressive course corrections in the history of cinema. Ouija: Origin of Evil has everything that the original movie didn’t, with a terrifying tale that still finds time to discuss how ghosts represent the hope of getting in touch with loved ones we have lost along the way.
If you are looking for a classic horror story, Ouija: Origin of Evil won’t let you down, perfectly capable of standing together with James Wan’s Insidious or André Øvredal’s The Autopsy Of Jane Doe. Why rank it so low on this list, then? Well, while there’s a lot to love about Ouija: Origin of Evil, this is still a movie constricted by the limitations of a franchise, something that doesn’t give Flanagan a lot of breathing room. Even if it’s a solid horror experience, Ouija: Origin of Evil feels a little bit too classic to rise above Flanagan’s bolder projects.
Ouija: Origin of Evil
In 1967 Los Angeles, a widowed mother and her daughters add a new stunt to bolster their seance scam business by inviting an evil presence into their home, not realizing how dangerous it is.
Release Date October 21, 2016
Runtime 99 minutes
Studio Universal Pictures
Main Genre Horror
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11 ‘Before I Wake’ (2016)
Image via Netflix
At the same time that Flanagan directed Ouija: Origin of Evil from a script he wrote with Jeff Howard, the duo worked on a second script together. Contrary to Ouija: Origin of Evil, 2016’s Before I Wake gave Flanagan total creative freedom, which allowed him to craft the unique concept of a boy whose dreams come true. Before I Wake explores how our mind creates nightmares from our suppressed memories, allowing Flanagan tointroduce an original monster, the Canker Man. Nevertheless, the monster is not the most disturbing aspect of Before I Wake, as the film also asks how far we would be willing to go to spend one last moment with a dead loved one.
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While Before I Wake is not the first story about parents dealing with the death of their infant child, the film does a great job of shifting the focus to the living and their actions, showing the terrifying consequences of putting memories before present life. Unfortunately, Before I Wake crumbles in the third act when Flanagan transforms the dark fantasy into a full-blown horror movie that never has the same emotional impact. Even worse is the unnecessary exposition put in place to make sure the public understands every nuance of the story. Nevertheless, regardless of its shortcomings, Before I Wake is a magical tale about grief, a theme that Flanagan artfully explores in all his work.
Before I Wake
A couple adopt an orphaned child whose dreams – and nightmares – manifest physically as he sleeps.
Release Date April 7, 2016
Runtime 97
Main Genre Horror
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10 ‘Absentia’ (2011)
Image via Phase 4 Films
Flanagan’s first film, Absentia, was funded entirely via a Kickstarter campaign, showing how little money there was to produce an ambitious feature-length project. Flanagan used his own home as a set and counted on a terrific cast to make the most of Absentia. Even so, the microbudget still hurts the film, as it stops Flanagan from delivering the climax the film builds up to.
Absentia is the story of a pregnant woman (Courtney Bell) dealing with the disappearance of her husband (Morgan Peter Brown), supported by her addicted sister (Katie Parker). However, Absentia is also about creatures that live under bridges and kidnap humans for evil purposes. When the film leans on the horrors of human life, Absentia is desolating, but once the focus shifts to the creatures, it becomes evident that the crew didn’t have the money they needed to awe the audience. Flanagan is smart enough never to let the creatures be in the center of the spotlight. Still, it feels like Absentia is missing something when the credits roll, like a final unnerving shot that reveals the dreadful reality the film teases. Without the ending it promises, Absentia ranks behind other Flanagan productions.
Absentia (2011)
Release Date March 3, 2011
Cast Katie Parker , Courtney Bell , Dave Levine , Justin Gordon , Morgan Peter Brown , Jamie Flanagan , Doug Jones , Scott Graham
9 ‘Gerald’s Game’ (2017)
Image via Netflix
Based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, Gerald’s Game follows a woman named Jessie (Carla Gugino), who is handcuffed to a bed by her husband, Gerald (Bruce Greenwood), right before he has a heart attack and dies. With no neighbors to hear her screams and no way to free herself, Jessie starts to reflect upon her life and the abusive relationships she had with both her husband and her father. The events of the novel happen mainly in a single room and inside a character’s mind, so we wouldn’t expect it to become an engaging visual experience. Even so, Flanagan’s adaptation of Gerald’s Game is as thrilling as it is gut-wrenching. Flanagan uses some clever tricks to bring Jessie’s inner monologues to life, and the story is so attentively crafted that it feels like King’s novel was always supposed to become a film.
Gerald’s Game’s sin is in being too faithful to the original material. We all love King’s work, but we’ve got to admit the master of horror has some issues with giving proper endings to his novels — It, Dreamcatcher, Under the Dome, I’m looking at all of you! Unfortunately, Flanagan’s adaptation reproduces a plot twist that’s hard to swallow and, worse, takes the focus away from Jessie’s inner struggle, just for the sake of a horror thrill. As a result, Gerald’s Game’s final minutes reduce the impact of a story that’s all about a woman’s liberation, and it would be best if Flanagan took more creative liberties with the film.
Gerald’s Game
Release Date September 29, 2017
Runtime 103 minutes
Main Genre Drama
8 ‘Doctor Sleep’ (2019)
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Almost four decades after The Shining became one of the greatest classics of horror cinema, Doctor Sleep hit theaters with the dual intention of continuing Stanley Kubrick’s vision and, at the same time, including the fantastic elements of Stephen King’s original book. Few directors could tackle this challenge and be successful, but Flanagan does precisely that. On top of uniting Kubrick’s and King’s voices, Doctor Sleep is a big-budget horror film that incorporates elements of adventure and fantasy in order to appeal to a wider audience, while still building complex characters and dealing with their inner demons. It’s fascinating, layered, and, unfortunately, a little too ambitious for its own sake.
Even if Flanagan does a wonderful job with Doctor Sleep, the movie stretches the limits of public attention during three hours that jump from contemplative reflection to action set-pieces. Considering that Flanagan cut a lot of details from the original novel to make its massive story fit the film, we could wonder if Doctor Sleep wouldn’t be a better fit for a limited series format, so it would have the time to explore the rich universe in a more cohesive fashion. Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep is a worthy adaptation of King’s novel, but it’s still too uneven to be considered the best film of his career.
Doctor Sleep
Release Date October 30, 2019
Runtime 153
Main Genre Horror
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7 ‘The Midnight Club’ (2022)
Image via Netflix
The Midnight Club has everything a Flanagan series needs to be unforgettable: a great cast of characters, discussions about human mortality, and a mystery that will keep the audience guessing until the last moment. The only reason the show ranks so low on this list is that the series feels somewhat uneven by the end of the season. This could have been fixed in the future if Flanagan and co-creator Leah Fong got a series renewal at Netflix, but that never happened. However, as it is, The Midnight Club was obviously conceived as a story that should take more than ten episodes to develop, and one season alone feels a little incomplete.
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Even so, Flanagan’s first experience with teen horror is highly successful, also thanks to The Midnight Club never shying away from challenging subjects. Even though The Midnight Club is trying to reach a younger audience, the show is still about accepting death to enjoy life, and deals with controversial themes such as suicide, drug abuse, and STDs. The show has its fair share of chills and thrills, exploring the idea of a cult dedicated to prolonging life and healing the human body, no matter the cost. However, the heart of the story is its cast of terminal young patients, grasping whatever pleasure they can have before inevitably going to the grave.
The Midnight Club
Release Date October 7, 2022
Cast Samantha Sloyan , Zach Gilford , Igby Rigney , Heather Langenkamp , Matt Biedel , Annarah Cymone , Ruth Codd , Aya Furukawa
Seasons 1
Story By Christopher Pike
Network Netflix
Streaming Service(s) Netflix
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6 ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (2023)
The Fall of the House of Usher follows the deterioration of a corrupt and decadent family. By 2023, Flanagan had already shown that he was a master of adaptations, especially when it comes to horror writers. However, with The Fall of the House of Usher, based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, he took it to a new level. Like many of Flanagan’s shows, each episode of the 10-episode season follows a different member of the extensive Usher family, but these episodes follow specific Poe stories as well. What makes Flanagan so good at adaptations is not only his understanding of the source material, but also his willingness to deviate from it with his own vision. Nevertheless, despite the beautiful cinematography and use of color throughout, House of Usher is still a rather conventional horror tale. Even if it has some stunning monologues, the series is trying to do too much. With a stronger conclusion than The Midnight Club, the series just edges the previous one out, but this is far from Flanagan’s best work. — Therese Lacson
The Fall of the House of Usher
Siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built a pharmaceutical company into an empire of wealth, privilege and power; however, secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying.
Release Date October 12, 2023
Creator Mike Flanagan
Seasons 1
Studio Netflix
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5 ‘Hush’ (2016)
Image via Netflix
Flanagan has done his fair share of adaptations, but Hush is an original screenplay he wrote with his wife and frequent collaborator, Kate Siegel, who also stars in the film. The fact that Hush was publicly praised by Stephen King and by the director of The Exorcist, William Friedkin, should highlight how well-crafted and nerve-inducing this home-invasion slasher is, breathing new life into an overused story format. All the expected elements are present in Hush: a masked killer, a lonely woman, and a big house in the wilderness. However, by making the heroine deaf, Flanagan can flex his editor’s muscles by manipulating both sound effects and silence.
While some of Flanagan’s productions seem to struggle with the weight of the filmmaker’s ambition, Hush is a self-contained story with a clear purpose and a sharp execution, and it wouldn’t be too much to say this is one of the best slashers ever made. There’s no lack of blood dripping from knives, but the characters are also developed enough so that you care about them without losing the focus of the cat-and-mouse game that’s being played. Hush is not yet Flanagan at his peak, but from now on, this ranking does a lot more nitpicking just to order the last few incredible entries.
Hush
Release Date April 8, 2016
Cast John Gallagher Jr. , Kate Siegel , Michael Trucco , Samantha Sloyan , Emilia Graves
Runtime 82 minutes
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4 ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ (2020)
Image via Netflix
The anthological sequel to The Haunting of Hill House repeats the success of the first miniseries by crafting an extremely satisfying narrative in which layered characters must face the ghosts of their pasts. With small details hidden in each scene and a great mystery that reveals itself little by little, The Haunting of Bly Manor takes the viewer on a temporal journey that helps us understand that ghosts are nothing but the materialization of the traumas and regrets we all carry in our lives. On top of all that, the romance between Dani (Victoria Pedretti) and Jamie (Amelia Eve) might be one of the most touching love stories in the history of television.
However, Bly Manor doesn’t always achieve Hill House’s level of cohesion. Although Flanagan created the series, the production involved multiple directors, partly explaining why some episodes feel uneven. The narrative structure of Bly Manor also doesn’t help with cohesion. While there is a central haunting in Bly Manor, the series often deviates from the main path to explore ghosts that are secondary to the plot, increasing the potential confusion of watching such a fragmented story. Even so, Bly Manor is one of the most audacious series available on Netflix, and it deserves all the praise it gets.
3 ‘Oculus’ (2013)
Image via Relativity Media
The best film in Flanagan’s career was only his second. After Absentia gathered a lot of public interest, even with the limited budget, Flanagan made a deal with Blumhouse to transform one of his student short films into a full feature. The resulting movie, Oculus, is one of the most elegant horror films ever crafted. Oculus follows the battle of a brother (Brenton Thwaites/Garrett Ryan Ewald) and a sister (Karen Gillan/Annalise Basso) against a cursed mirror, both when the two are still children and again when they are adults. Instead of a linear structure, the movie constantly shifts from the present to the past, as the misadventures of the adult siblings mirror the events of their childhood.
The movie’s structure is not the only element of Oculus that echoes the source of evil, as Flanagan brilliantly plays with the viewer’s perception to drag the audience inside the ghost story. The entity in the mirror can never touch its victims directly and, instead, alters their perception to make them act against their will. Oculus distorts its images to make you question what’s real or not, just as the characters inside the movie wonder the same. Oculus is a rare film that manages to share the horrifying experience of its plot with the viewer, with a lasting impact that you’ll carry long after watching it.
Oculus
A recently released inmate from a mental asylum learns from his sister that the murders he was convicted of committing were actually orchestrated by a supernatural entity, the Lasser Glass mirror.
Release Date April 3, 2014
Runtime 105
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2 ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ (2018)
Image via Netflix
With a fantastic cast that includes a team of children surprisingly capable of handling challenging scenes, The Haunting of Hill House charms audiences with the drama of a family trying to move on with their lives after living in a haunted house, which led to the suicide of the family matriarch (Carla Gugino). Navigating through different decades to build its mystery, each episode is written to fulfill a goal of its own, rather than just being a cut-out piece of a grand narrative. Instead of underestimating the audience’s ability to follow complex narratives, the series plays with the passage of time and gradually offers the pieces for the great puzzle it intends to assemble. Mike Flanagan’s total creative control, which includes directing all episodes, also gives the series an enviable technical consistency.
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With The Haunting of Hill House, Flanagan was able to use the freedom of a limited series to dive deep into the real horrors that haunt our lives without neglecting some pretty good scares. The anachronic structure he had previously used in Oculus is also used in Hill House with such care that the series became one of the most impressive horror productions ever made. You’d think it would be hard for Flanagan to make anything better than Hill House, yet he managed to do it only a few years later.
Watch on Netflix
1 ‘Midnight Mass’ (2021)
Image via Netflix
Even if Midnight Mass is the shortest series developed by Flanagan so far, it’s also the work that lingers the longest after the credits roll on the last episode. Firstly, Flanagan’s magnum opus is a technical wonder. Every shot is meaningful, and every line of dialogue serves a purpose. There’s no filler content in Midnight Mass, and the series is a testament to Flanagan’s masterful filmmaking skills. Flanagan directed every episode and at least co-signed every script, which gave him absolute control over his pet project, a story he conceived many years before turning it into a series (and we can confidently say that Midnight Mass spent enough time cooking to be served to perfection).
Some people might find Midnight Mass too talkative, but that’s actually one of the charms of the series. While Midnight Masstells a unique vampire story, the series is also a long and complex meditation on the power of faith, the atrocities committed by religion, and the philosophical questions revolving around God and morality. Instead of disregarding religion and praising scientific thought, Flanagan is willing to go the extra mile and show how complex people are — independently of their faith, they can do awful or wondrous things. Flanagan pours his heart and soul into the theological conflict at the heart of Midnight Mass and explores it without falling into the temptation of giving simple answers to layered issues. And when all is said and done, Flanagan turns his potentially bleak story into a hopeful and deeply touching manifesto in defense of life as the most meaningful experience in the universe. It’s beautiful and scary, and it reveals new things every time we watch it. That alone is more than enough to make Midnight Mass timeless.
Midnight Mass
An isolated island community experiences miraculous events – and frightening omens – after the arrival of a charismatic, mysterious young priest.
Release Date September 24, 2021
Seasons 1
Creator Mike Flanagan
Watch on Netflix
Mike Flanagan’s Upcoming Projects
Image by Jefferson Chacon
Thankfully, this ranking of Mike Flanagan projects will only get longer and longer as time goes by, as the horror writer and creator still has a lot of stories to tell. But, after The Fall of the House of the House of Usher, his fans will have to take a trip to another streaming platform if they want to keep up with his works. That’s because Flanagan and his producer Trevor Macy have chosen to strike up a deal with Prime Video — a deal that may come with an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, a series of novels that has already been adapted to the screen in 2017 via a movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, with little success. There is certainly a lot of expectation for what a Flanagan-directed TV show based on the saga might look like.
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Movie-wise, Flanagan also has at least two buns in the oven. One of them is yet another adaptation of a King story, the 2020 novella The Life of Chuck, which, despite featuring Scream King Matthew Lillard, is not a horror movie. Described in its logline as “three separate stories linked to tell the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor at 39 and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house,” the movie also stars Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, and Jacob Tremblay. The other proverbial bun is a new installment in the Exorcist franchise, set to be released in March 2026. After the failure of The Exorcist: Believer, there’s a significant amount of pressure on Flanagan to breathe new life into the franchise, but you know, if anyone can do it, it’s probably him.