Picture Credits: Getty Images / Netflix
Mike Flanagan is one of the most authentic voices in horror today. There’s always a sincerity to his characters, his scares, and his recurring themes. He’s clearly a man exploring the questions that keep him, and his audiences, up at night. There’s more to Flanagan’s fear than goosebumps.
Over the past decade, he’s given audiences horror wonders such as Doctor Sleep and The Haunting of Hill House. Most recently, he co-wrote Clayface and adapted Carrie for Amazon Prime Video, where he landed after his Netflix deal expired. For years, though, Flanagan and the streamer had a good thing going. A steady stream of stories, not content, from Flanagan was a sweet Halloween treat. Three Halloweens on, nobody has taken his spot on the calendar.
From movies to shows, in the order they arrived, here’s a trip down memory lane with the horror filmmaker’s invaluable contributions to the Netflix library.
Hush (2016)
Film | 81 minutes
Flanagan’s first Netflix title is still one of his leanest. Co-written by and starring Kate Siegel, his wife and longtime creative partner, Hush follows a deaf writer who faces a home invasion in the woods. For 80 lean, mean, spooky minutes, it’s Flanagan’s most thriller-driven film, and it would make a fine double bill with the Audrey Hepburn classic Wait Until Dark. It’s just damn good, tightly wound tension that doesn’t let up.
This departed Netflix in 2023 with very few streaming options but thankfully, returned to Netflix as part of Netflix’s Halloween slate alongside a few other Flangan movies like Oculus.
Gerald’s Game (2017 )
Film | 103 minutes
Flanagan’s first of many Stephen King adaptations opened the doors to other worlds than these. It was a rousing success, taking a theatrical concept, a woman (Carla Gugino) handcuffed to a bed with her husband lying dead on the floor, and making it a subtle cinematic hell. Gugino delivers a tour de force performance, while Flanagan delivers intimate scares. Gerald’s Game was proof that Flanagan understands the true power of King’s work. It’s not all about the nightmare-inducing scares but the well-drawn characters.
Before I Wake (2018)
Film | 97 minutes
Not enough Flanagan heads talk about Before I Wake. It had a troubled release, with a ridiculously long wait following the bankruptcy of Relativity Media. Netflix ultimately distributed the movie in the U.S. four years after it was shot, but to not quite enough fanfare. There are enough satisfying nightmares in Before I Wake, in which Thomas Jane and Kate Bosworth take in a foster child whose dreams bring a terrifying force into their home. It’s almost a warmup to Flanagan’s later explorations of fractured families, but as it stands, Before I Wake is a pretty good horror movie for the PG-13 crowd.
The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Series | 10 episodes
This just might be Mike Flanagan’s masterpiece. Based very loosely on Shirley Jackson’s novel, Flanagan tells the best kind of horror story, the kind his literary heroes told: if you removed all the horror, you’d still have a fantastic drama. The Crain family is, to say the least, complicated. Death and ghosts bring them together after years of estrangement. It’s an honest portrayal of the hardships of life and what scares most people day-to-day. Yes, there is loads of technical wizardry here, like a mind-altering one-take in a funeral home, but you’ll cry as much as you fear in Hill House. It’s masterful horror, and it’s the show that turned October into Flanagan season.
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
Series | 9 episodes
Taking pages from Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and other tales, The Haunting of Bly Manor at least doesn’t try to repeat the success of Hill House. This is Flanagan and his team operating at a more subdued, existential pace. The craft is, once again, exceptional. Unlike Flanagan’s other films and shows, though, the heart and scares aren’t quite as compelling. It’s all well done. It just doesn’t land the frights or the gut punches the way his other work does.
Midnight Mass (2021)
Series | 7 episodes
Along with Hill House, Midnight Mass is where fans witness Flanagan and his team operating at the top of their game. The vampire story was no doubt influenced by King’s ‘Salem’s Lot and Revival (the latter even makes a cameo), but it’s a real original horror tragedy from the filmmaker. The story of a small seaside town consumed by vampirism, a false prophet, and turning against thy neighbor, well, let’s just say it isn’t without some never-ending resonance. There’s humanity and warmth in Midnight Mass, but there’s real fear, too. It’s a contained epic from Flanagan, a rich piece of writing and craftsmanship that plays like a horrifying biblical tale.
The Midnight Club (2022)
Series | 10 episodes
One of Flanagan’s final contributions to the Netflix library was, unfortunately, maybe his most divisive and least talked about. Co-created with Leah Fong and based on the novels of Christopher Pike, The Midnight Club told another tale about death, set at a hospice where terminally ill teens gather at midnight to tell scary stories. It was aimed at a younger audience than Flanagan’s other projects, and it’s a sincere piece of getaway horror that Netflix decided against renewing. (Flanagan later posted the answers to the show’s unresolved mysteries online, which tells you how much he cared about it.) Having said that, Flanagan is at his best writing about adults wrestling with the pain of childhood, not kids wrestling with the pain of adulthood.
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
Series | 8 episodes
While Hush was an airtight thriller, The Fall of the House of Usher is a reminder of how entertaining Flanagan is when he’s given room to breathe with a miniseries. Nobody could ever say the man doesn’t love a monologue. He crafted the perfect imperfect family, the Ushers, while drawing from a variety of Edgar Allan Poe classics. It’s pure gothic fun from the filmmaker, flexing all his showmanship muscles. Look no further than the lemon-squeezing speech from Bruce Greenwood as Roderick Usher to be reminded of the verbose, dramatic pleasures of this Poe love letter and slice of stylish camp. It was also his last show for Netflix, and the last time October on the service felt like it belonged to someone.
The Flanagan-Sized Hole
Nobody has filled it. From 2018 to 2023, with one year off, a new Flanagan series arrived every fall like clockwork, each a different flavor of gothic. Hill House in October, Bly Manor in October, Midnight Mass in September, The Midnight Club and Usher in October. It was the closest thing Netflix had to a Halloween tradition. Since Usher, the service’s Octobers have felt a lot quieter. Fear Street: Prom Queen scratched a different itch, teen slasher rather than gothic drama, and nothing else has arrived with the same regularity.
On paper, Guillermo del Toro is the obvious heir. He has the same reverence for the classics, the same instinct for monsters with a soul, and a Netflix deal to match. Cabinet of Curiosities landed in October 2022 as an anthology purpose-built for the season, and Frankenstein was the most lavish horror picture the streamer has ever bankrolled. But even that one went to theaters first and hit Netflix in November missing out on being Netflix’s big Halloween release. Del Toro works at del Toro’s pace: one film every few years, and a second season of Curiosities that looks like, out of choice, it’ll never come. Flanagan was a consistent hitter in the space, and that’s the thing Netflix lost when the deal lapsed. Not every he produced was a big hit viewership wise but nearly everything was critically acclaimed and that’s worth something.
Until someone else is handed the keys to October, the list above is as close as the service gets.
