Chloe's Not Scared

Welcome to my spoiler-free series where I analyze a director’s filmography and talk about which films are essential in understanding their work. This isn’t necessarily a ranking of their best movies (though oftentimes, it skews that way), but rather, these films describe what kind of movies this director was interested in making over the course of their working lives.

This time, we are skewing a little from our original format to discuss television and film director Mike Flanagan, a relatively new name in horror and yet someone who has already cemented himself as one of the greats. Mike Flanagan was born in the already-eerie town of Salem, Massachusetts in 1978. After graduating from Towson University in 2002, he moved to Los Angeles where he began working his way up in the film and tv industry. He is married to actress Kate Siegel, who appears in many of his films. Flanagan has also been sober since 2018 and uses his films to explore ideas of addiction and family. He is best known for his work in television and for adapting Stephen King’s stories to the big screen.

Flanagan’s first film, Absentia (2011), is not the best film on this list, but it shows the ideas that he is willing to play with and some interesting camera flourishes that later became his signature style. The story follows a pregnant woman whose husband, who disappeared 7 years earlier, returns malnourished and confused. The film is set in Glendale, California and features an especially creepy tunnel. Absentia was funded through Kickstarter and was written, edited and directed by Flanagan.

Oculus (2013), starring Karen Gillan (Doctor Who, Jumanji reboots) and Brenton Thwaites (The Giver) follows siblings who went through a harrowing event as children which resulted in Thwaites’ character receiving long-term inpatient psychiatric treatment. When he is released as an adult, his sister wants them to revisit their old childhood home and the mirror that haunts it (the mirror is called The Lasser Glass- how cool is that?). Oculus has always kind of been Flanagan’s pet project. Back in 2005, he made a short film called Oculus 3: The Man with the Plan which was highly acclaimed. The feature was directed by Flanagan and written by Flanagan and his writing partner Jeff Howard. Oculus also began Flanagan’s career-long partnership with the composers The Newton Brothers, who did the score for this film and each subsequent move and series on the list. You can see familial trauma and a braided timeline that end up being in almost all of his work. Plus, as far as haunted mirror movies go, this is it.

The year that Mike Flanagan married actress Kate Siegel is also the year that Siegel co-wrote and starred in a Flanagan enterprise: Hush (2016). Also starring John Gallagher Jr., Hush follows Maddie (Siegel), a deaf-mute horror author who is terrorized one night by a home invader. As someone who hates seeing women beat up (in horror movies and real life), I can say that Hush left me feeling empowered and rooting for Maddie. The film was met with critical acclaim, including praise from director William Friedkin and author Stephen King. The film also marked Flanagan’s years-long partnership with Netflix, which acquired the rights to the film before its premiere. In 2024, Shout! Factory released a limited edition Blu-ray featuring a new black-and-white soundtrack-less edit called The Shush Cut, which gained a cult following.

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) acted as the prequel to Ouija (2014) and was much more positively received. The movie premiered the same year as The Conjuring 2 and felt like Flanagan’s answer to the Conjuring series as a whole. Set in 1967, medium Alice (Elizabeth Reaser) and her two daughters Lina (Annalise Basso) and Doris (Lulu Watson) are usually the ones calling the shots when it comes to the paranormal. However, when they open up a Ouija board, the veil between the living and the dead becomes thinner. The vintage feel, the acting and the jump scares are especially strong in this film. As far as Blumhouse Productions go, Ouija: Origin of Evil is the cream of the crop, showing that Flanagan can make a commercially successful horror, not just indies. The film was directed by Flanagan and written by Flanagan and Howard– the dynamic duo!

Gerald’s Game premiered on Netflix on September 29, 2017. Adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name and previously thought to be un-filmable, Flanagan teamed up again with writer Howard to adapt this tense thriller with overcoming childhood trauma at the core. Jessie (Carla Gugino) and her husband Gerald arrive at a cabin for a romantic getaway, hoping to rekindle their marriage. When Gerald has a heart attack and leaves Jessie handcuffed to the bed in the middle of nowhere, she must fight for her life while simultaneously battling her past. This psychological thriller features a particular bloody hard-to-watch scene, so beware!

The Haunting of Hill House (2018) is Flanagan’s best and most influential work to date. Loosely based on the 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson with the same name, the story follows the Crain family (siblings Stephen, Shirley, Luke, Theo and Nell, with parents Olivia and Hugh) living in the titular Hill House and 26 years later, dealing with a heart-wrenching death. The grieving family has issues of addiction, communication and trauma, and must work out these issues together, even if they don’t want to. In other adaptations of Jackson’ work, it is often implied that Theo is lesbian, and Kate Siegel (who herself is bisexual) is one of the few actors to make Theo explicitly gay, much to the approval of the queer community. With hidden ghosts in the background, long shots, and of course family drama, this show proved Flanagan can be equal parts scary and heartfelt. While each episode had different writers, Flanagan wrote most of them (Howard co-wrote two episodes) and directed them all. The Haunting of Hill House was released to critical acclaim and has been praised by director Quentin Tarantino who says it’s his favorite Netflix show and author Stephen King who said that Shirley Jackson would approve.

When Stephen King came out with Doctor Sleep as a sequel to The Shining in 2013, there was some shock, awe, and skepticism. When Mike Flanagan adapted the novel for the screen in 2019, there was a similar response. The film Doctor Sleep (2019) explores Danny Torrence’s adult life, his addiction issues, his “shine,” other children who “shine” and the people who want to exploit them. Ewan McGregor plays Danny while Kyliegh Curran plays teen Abra who is wrestling with her own gift, and Rebecca Ferguson plays Rose, an adult who wants to steal Abra’s power. Released on Halloween 2019, critics and audience alike were pleasantly surprised with the adaptation and visual callbacks to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining film in 1980. While Flanagan was in King’s good graces, King famously disliked Kubrick’s version and Flanagan had to convince him that they needed to use the recognition of Kubrick’s Shining in their favor. King agreed. The film adaptation takes some liberties from the book, particularly at the end, but is generally an enjoyable watch, especially for the performances.

While this isn’t my favorite on the list, it is important to show that Flanagan continued “The Haunting of…” tv series on Netflix to much anticipation and acclaim with The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020). Based on the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and later, horror movie The Innocents (1961), Bly Manor follows a nonlinear structure exploring the life of a nanny in a rural British country house. Like Hill House, the film stars an ensemble cast but Victoria Pedretti plays Dani the au pair, Amelia Eve as Jamie the gardener, and Rahul Kohli as Owen the cook. The series was positively reviewed but critics and audiences alike noted that it was not as good as Hill House.

The tv series Midnight Mass (2021) took me completely by surprise. While I’m not often a fan of religious horror, I was encouraged to watch this series (also on Netflix), and it quickly became one of my favorites of Flanagan’s work. The series follows Riley (Zach Gilford) who returns to his hometown of Crockett Island after being imprisoned after killing someone while drunk driving. He begins a friendship with his childhood crush Erin (Kate Siegel) who is pregnant. There is another newcomer on Crockett… an enigmatic new priest Father Hill (Hamish Linklater) who has quickly replaced beloved Monsignor Pruitt. Though it’s one of Flanagan’s productions not based on Stephen King, it might as well be (due to the small town coastal vibes and a shocking twist). I encourage you to not look anything up about this series and just watch!

The Life of Chuck (2024) is Flanagan’s most recent feature film, also a work adapted from a Stephen King story in his collection of shorts If It Bleeds. The story is told in three acts with Tom Hiddleston starring as Chuck Krantz, as the world is nearing its end. The film was met with generally favorable reviews, with many reviews praising the performance of Mark Hamill, Chuck’s accountant grandfather. More sweet and heartwarming than scary (though the death of the universe is pretty terrifying), The Life of Chuck shows Flanagan’s tendency to not give the audience necessarily a “happy” ending but rather, a satisfying one.

Mike Flanagan is alive and well, still working in the industry. As of writing, he has a few projects in the pipeline including a tv reboot of Carrie, an Exorcist sequel, and the DC universe film Clayface. He also owns the rights to Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. I hope we have many more years and many more productions to add to this list!

Which Flanagan movie or tv show are you going to watch (or rewatch) this Halloween season? Which director do you want to see next in this series?

Listen to my episode of my dear friend Jim Laczkowski’s podcast Director’s Club here, where Jim and I discuss Mike Flanagan’s filmography. Read my first Hall of Fame on director Wes Craven here.

Works Cited:

About Mike – Mike Flanagan’s Website, Accessed October 20th, 2025

Director Mike Flanagan Interview, Oculus – MoviesOnline, September 7th, 2015

Stephen King says Doctor Sleep ‘redeems’ Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining– EW, November 5, 2019