It’d be selling Mike Flanagan very short to say that he knows a thing or two about horror when the filmmaker is arguably his generation’s foremost purveyor of atmospheric, supernatural and often existential scares. Thanks to his Netflix deal, the writer and director is free to develop passion project after passion project, and subscribers are reaping the rewards.
With The Haunting of Hill House, sequel series’ Bly Manor and Midnight Mass out of the way, Flanagan fans (Fanagans?) can now look forward to The Midnight Club, Something is Killing the Children and The Fall of the House of Usher, because the guy never seems to stop working.
When he does take a break, it would appear that he likes to react by watching other people’s contributions to the genre, with Flanagan having recently praised Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone, as you can see below.
Early reviews for the chilling adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story have been hugely enthusiastic, with Ethan Hawke being singled out for praise playing against type as a terrifying serial murderer of children, but the bad news for fans champing at the bit to see The Black Phone is that they’ll need to wait until January 2022 to clasp eyes on it for themselves.