In just a decade, Mike Flanagan turned from a filmmaker wannabe 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 even a single lousy production in the filmmaker’s history. Sure, some of Flanagan’s films and series hit harder than others, having a staying effect that’ll forever haunt our sleepless nights. Some productions can also be flawed, unable to give fruition to Flanagan’s ambitious storytelling for one reason or another. But 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 but 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 crafted a cohesive experience while also using horror to explore human 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 on 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 to Ouija was bound to happen. Lucky for us, Flanagan was chosen to helm 2016’s Ouija: Origin of Evil, a 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 human hope of getting in touch with the loved ones we lose 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 space. 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
PG-13
Horror
Drama
Mystery

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
Director
Mike Flanagan
Runtime
99 minutes
Studio
Universal Pictures

Watch on Netflix

11 'Before I Wake' (2016)

Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane in Before I Wake
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 to introduce an original monster with 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.

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 in shifting the focus to the living and their actions, showing how terrifying the consequences are 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 Flanagan explores in-depth in all his work.

Before I Wake
PG-13
Horror
Documentary
Fantasy
Thriller

A couple adopt an orphaned child whose dreams - and nightmares - manifest physically as he sleeps.

Release Date
April 7, 2016
Director
Mike Flanagan
Runtime
97
Writers
Mike Flanagan , Jeff Howard

Watch on Netflix

10 'Absentia' (2011)

Katie Parker in Absentia
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 micro-budget still hurts the film, as it stops Flanagan from delivering the climax the film builds up.

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 easy to see how the crew didn’t have the money they needed to awe the public. 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 take that reveals the dreadful reality the film teases. Without the ending it promises, Absentia stays behind other Flanagan productions.

Rent on Amazon Prime

9 'Gerald’s Game' (2017)

Still from 'Gerald's Game': Jessie (Carla Gugino) sits in bed looking frightened. Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) is positioned over her, blood on his arm.
Image via Netflix.

Stephen King’s novel Gerald's Game follows a woman cuffed in a bed by her husband right before he has a heart attack. With no neighbors to hear her screams and no way to get rid of her cuffs, the woman starts to reflect upon her life and the abusive relationship she had with both her husband and her dad. Gerald's Game is a novel that happens 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 (Carla Gugino) 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 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 it’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 adaptation.

Gerald's Game
TV-MA
Drama
Horror
Thriller
Release Date
September 29, 2017
Director
Mike Flanagan
Cast
Carla Gugino , Bruce Greenwood , Chiara Aurelia , Carel Struycken
Runtime
103 minutes

Watch on Netflix

8 'Doctor Sleep' (2019)

Ewan McGregor looking through a hole in a door in Doctor Sleep
Image via Warner Bros.

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 in his career.

Doctor Sleep
R
Horror
Thriller


Years following the events of The Shining (1980), a now-adult Dan Torrance must protect a young girl with similar powers from a cult known as The True Knot, who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.

Release Date
October 30, 2019
Director
Mike Flanagan
Cast
Rebecca Ferguson , Ewan McGregor , Zahn McClarnon , Chelsea Talmadge , Carl Lumbly , Alexandra Essoe
Runtime
153

Rent on Amazon Prime

7 'The Midnight Club' (2022)

The Midnight Club characters standing together
Image via Netflix

The Midnight Club has everything a great Flanagan series needs to be unforgettable: a great cast of characters, discussions about human mortality, and an overall mystery that will keep the audience guessing until the last moment. The only reason it ranks so low on this list is that the series feels somewhat uneven by the end of the season. That could have be 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.

Even so, Flanagan's first experience with teen horror is highly successful, also thanks to The Midnight Club never refraining 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. The series also deals with controversial themes such as suicide, drug abuse, and STDs, focusing on the experiences of young adults. The Midnight Club 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 patients, grasping whatever pleasure they can have before inevitably going to the grave.

The Midnight Club
TV-MA
Thriller
Horror
Mystery

At a manor with a mysterious history, eight members of the Midnight Club meet each night at midnight to tell sinister stories -- and to look for signs of the supernatural from the beyond.

Release Date
October 7, 2022
Cast
Iman Benson , Igby Rigney , Ruth Codd , Annarah Cymone
Seasons
1
Creator
Mike Flanagan

Watch on Netflix

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. Based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Flanagan has already showed that he is a master of adaptations, especially when it comes to horror writers, but with House of Usher he takes it to a new level. Like many of his episodic shows, each episode of the 10-episode season follows a different member of the extensive Usher family, but now these episodes also follow specific Poe stories as well. What makes Flanagan so good at adaptations is his understanding of the source but also his willingness to deviate from it with his own vision. However, despite beautiful cinematography and use of color throughout, House of Usher is still a rather conventional horror tale. Even if it had 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
TV-MA
Drama
Horror


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
Cast
Carla Gugino , Willa Fitzgerald , Mary McDonnell , Kate Siegel
Creator
Mike Flanagan
Main Genre
Horror
Seasons
1

Watch on Netflix

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5 'Hush' (2016)

Hush 2016 Kate Siegel
Image via Netflix

Flanagan did his fair share of adaptations, but Hush is an original screenplay he wrote with 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 air into an overused story format. All the expected elements are present in Hush: a masked killer, a lonely woman, a big house in the wilderness. However, by making the heroine Maddie (Siegel) 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 developed just enough, so you care about them without losing the focus of the cat-and-mouse game that’s being played. Hush is not yet Flanagan at its peak, but from now on, this ranking will count a lot more with nitpicking just to order the last few entries.

Hush
R
Horror
Thriller
Release Date
April 8, 2016
Director
Mike Flanagan
Cast
John Gallagher Jr. , Kate Siegel , Michael Trucco , Samantha Sloyan , Emilia Graves
Runtime
82 minutes

4 'The Haunting of Bly Manor' (2020)

Cast of The Haunting of Bly Manor in dinner scene
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 own 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 of 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 series 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 main 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.

The Haunting of Bly Manor
TV-MA
Mystery
Horror
Drama
Release Date
October 9, 2020
Cast
Victoria Pedretti , Henry Thomas , T'Nia Miller , Carla Gugino
Seasons
1
Showrunner
Mike Flanagan

Watch on Netflix

3 'Oculus' (2013)

Karen Gillan as Kaylie and Brenton Thwaites as Tim in Oculus (2014)
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 fully grown 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
R
Horror

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
Director
Mike Flanagan
Runtime
105

Rent on Amazon Prime

2 'The Haunting of Hill House' (2018)

Nell in front of a red door looking sad in The Haunting of Hill House
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 mother of five. 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.

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 refined to the most in Hill House with such care that the series becomes one of the most impressive horror productions ever made. It would be hard for Flanagan to make anything better than Hill House, he does manage to do it.

The Haunting of Hill House
TV-MA
Horror
Drama
Mystery
Release Date
October 12, 2018
Cast
Michiel Huisman , Elizabeth Reaser , Kate Siegel , Victoria Pedretti , Timothy Hutton , Carla Gugino , Henry Thomas
Seasons
1
Creator
Mike Flanagan

Watch on Netflix

1 'Midnight Mass' (2021)

midnight mass official poster, the entire cast stands facing the camera.
Image via Netflix

Even if Midnight Mass is the shortest series developed by Flanagan so far, it’s also the work that lingers the longer after the credits roll on the last episode. First of all, 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 say 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 Mass tells a unique vampire story, the series is actually 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 people are complex. 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 manifest in defense of life as the most meaningful experience in the universe. It’s beautiful, scary, and reveals new things every time we watch it. That alone is more than enough to make Midnight Mass timeless.

Midnight Mass
TV-MA
Horror
Drama
Fantasy

An isolated island community experiences miraculous events - and frightening omens - after the arrival of a charismatic, mysterious young priest.

Release Date
September 24, 2021
Cast
Kate Siegel , Zach Gilford , Kristin Lehman , Samantha Sloyan
Seasons
1
Creator
Mike Flanagan

Watch on Netflix