Mike Flanagan’s Journey to Becoming the New King of Horror

Mike Flanagan is almost undeniably horror’s most imaginative director right now. He’s given us pure, creeping fear in Hush, surreal dread in Gerald’s Game, and invoked just about every fright imaginable in the course of The Haunting of Hill House - not to mention earned the personal blessing of Stephen King along the way. But his journey to the top of the profession has been a long one, and occasionally a horror story in its own right. His latest Netflix series, Midnight Mass, is another jewel in Flanagan’s crown, which seems as good a reason as any to revisit an interview we had with the director in 2019, where we had him talk us through every professional project in his career, from Absentia through to Doctor Sleep, telling his story in his own words. This is a director’s journey to become the new king of horror.