Every Mike Flanagan TV Show, Ranked
Chris is a UK-based film and TV writer, editor and occasional filmmaker. For more than a decade, he has written news, reviews and features covering movies, television and pop culture. He has also made short films and worked in video production, giving him experience on both sides of the screen. Chris runs the We Love Movies More Than You TikTok channel and has a particular interest in overlooked and short-lived TV shows.
Few filmmakers are as committed to making high-quality horror for both the big and small screen as Mike Flanagan. While many of his projects are adaptations, Flanagan uses the source material as a jumping-off point to make something hauntingly familiar yet unmistakably his own. Frequently using and subverting genre conventions, Flanagan's character-first approach has helped birth some of the most memorable limited series of the last decade.
Horror has always been effectively used to explore the darker sides of the human condition, and the worlds Flanagan builds are often as terrifying as they are emotionally devastating. From unearthing past traumas in The Haunting of Hill House to boldly reimagining Stephen King's Carrie, Flanagan knows how to spin a yarn that stays with audiences. There are no bad shows in his esteemed filmography, just ones that balanced human drama with supernatural horror more successfully.
6 'The Midnight Club' (2022)
In a flip from Flanagan's usual examination of regret-filled adults, The Midnight Club focuses on young adults who won't have the luxury of growing up to have them. Set in a secluded hospice manor for terminally ill teenagers, a select few residents known as "The Midnight Club" convene after dark to share tales of terror. Co-created with Leah Fong and based on Christopher Pike's YA novel (and wider works), The Midnight Club was Flanagan's first TV show designed as a returning series. Sadly, it was canceled after its first season, leaving the supernatural mystery the show spent ten episodes building unresolved.
While the series was cut short, Flanagan's first foray into making something for a younger audience still has a lot to enjoy. The club members become a found family and share their deeply held fears about their limited futures through stories that range from sci-fi to an Alfred Hitchcock homage. Ruth Codd steals every scene as the defiant Anya, and A Nightmare on Elm Street's Heather Langenkamp makes a welcome return to horror as the mysterious Dr. Stanton. The Midnight Club may be light on scares, but it still delivers the complex characters, atmosphere, and powerful monologues fans expect from Flanagan's work.
5 'Carrie' (2026)
Flanagan's most recent series marks the first time he's adapted a Stephen King story for television. Following the death of her strict father, Carrie White (Summer H. Howell) is forced to attend high school, having been homeschooled her whole life by her overbearing mother, played forcefully by Samantha Sloyan. This opens up Carrie's limited world, but her peers' cruelty will help unlock her dangerous telekinetic powers.
Wisely, the Prime Video series doesn't merely redo the story we know; Flanagan takes it into uncharted territory to find new horrors to explore for his wide-eyed Carrie. He even manages to see the humanity in her monstrous mother. It's a smart and relevant update that does a more successful job of relocating the story to the social media age than the 2013 movie remake. However, much like The Midnight Club, Carrie doesn't have a full-fledged ending despite being labeled a miniseries. Flanagan has said his "dream scenario" is three seasons for Carrie. The finale certainly left the door wide open for a second season that will take the story well beyond the book.
4 'The Haunting of Bly Manor' (2020)
Based on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Bly Manor offers a very different take on the haunted house, and those expecting a repeat performance of Hill House may be disappointed. While the same ingredients are there, Bly Manor is a tragic love story and Flanagan at his most sentimental. That isn't to say there's an absence of horror in his '80s-set series. The new au pair, Dani (Victoria Pedretti), arrives to look after two orphaned children and soon discovers they aren't the only ones that reside at Bly Manor.
While Dani and Jamie's (Amelia Eve) budding romance is the heart of the show, the theme of missed chances runs through the deep affection between Hannah (T'Nia Miller) and Owen (Rahul Kohli). The ghosts of lost love cast a wide shadow here, haunting those left behind. Horror isn't always a tangible force to overcome and banish; sometimes the cause leaves an indelible mark that no amount of time can remove. The Haunting of Bly Manor may be supernatural, yet its cause is unmistakably human.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Is Your Biggest Horror Nightmare? Elm Street · Chucky · Scream · The Conjuring
Four horror franchises. Four completely different ways of scaring you. One waits until you fall asleep. One makes sure nobody believes you. One is already in your group of friends. And one is in the house with your family. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually watch horror, and find out which nightmare was built for you.
😴Elm Street(Freddy Krueger)
🧸Chucky(Child's Play)
📞Scream(Ghostface)
🕯️The Conjuring(The Warren Files)
01
Which horror scene makes you cover your eyes? Four classic images. One of them is worse than the others for you.
02
You are home alone and you hear a noise. First thought? Everybody has one. It arrives before you have decided anything.
03
Which horror movie rule would you break first? Everybody thinks they would survive. Almost nobody actually does.
04
Something genuinely frightening happens. What do you do? Not in a film. In your actual living room, tonight.
05
How do you actually watch a horror film? Be honest about this one. Nobody is checking.
06
Somebody offers you serious money. Which do you still refuse? The amount does not matter. There is one on this list you are not doing.
07
Which feeling stays with you a week after the film? Good horror does not stop when the credits do.
08
Something wakes you at 3am. What is the worst possibility? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your nightmare.
The Lights Just Went Out Your Nightmare Is…
Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what it would leave behind.
Elm Street
Your nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever won that particular argument.
- Freddy is horror's cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever.
- You are the one who is fine during the film and wide awake at two in the morning. Your own head is where this does its damage.
- These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose because they are weak. They lose because they are tired.
- You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep.
Chucky
Your nightmare is not really the doll. It is the face of the person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it.
- Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you.
- You are the one shouting at the screen because the characters are not listening. You know that feeling from real life too.
- The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you have met those adults.
- By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own.
Scream
Your nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them.
- Scream is the only one of these where the killer takes the mask off and turns out to be somebody who was at the party.
- You are the person who calls the twist out loud before it lands. You watch people the same way you watch films.
- The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention.
- Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home.
The Conjuring
Your nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people asleep down the hall, and the feeling that whatever is here is not interested in leaving.
- The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary room that quietly stops feeling ordinary.
- Your instinct is to get everybody into one room. Your fear is protective rather than personal, which is rarer than it sounds.
- This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are the ones who are not alone and refuse to be.
- Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one standing in the hallway.
3 'The Fall of the House of Usher' (2023)
Flanagan ended his Netflix era with this gruesome love letter to Edgar Allan Poe that frequently veers towards corporate satire. Spinning several of Poe's works into a pulpy pit of despair, The Fall of the House of Usher charts the titular family's downfall as their pharmaceutical empire crumbles. Rich, deceitful, and selfish, the Ushers are awful people with barely a redeemable quality, and something comes calling for a supernatural debt that needs to be settled.
Each episode reworks a story or poem from Poe's macabre catalog and, in most cases, follows a different sibling as they head toward a truly diabolical demise. The second episode, "The Masque of the Red Death," which culminates in a warehouse-club scene with a high body count, isn't for the faint of heart (or those who enjoy pizza). While all the siblings are far from innocent, they are forced to pay the price for their father's sins, and there is a gleeful enjoyment in watching Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) have everything torn away. With Carla Gugino, Kate Siegel, Rahul Kohli, and Mark Hamill on exceptional form, The Fall of the House of Usher is Flanagan at his most viciously entertaining.
2 'The Haunting of Hill House' (2018)
Flanagan’s first Netflix series turned Shirley Jackson's book into a grounded horror series that’s as heartbreaking as it is scary. As children, the Crain siblings endured the unimaginable when their mother (Carla Gugino) took her own life during their time at Hill House. Now, as adults, those traumas have shaped who they are, and it takes a fresh tragedy for them to finally confront a childhood they each remember differently.
Weaving the past and present together, Flanagan's approach pays off with a satisfying mystery that demands repeat viewing to fully appreciate. Arguments and misunderstandings between the Crain siblings become uncomfortable later as we learn what was going on in their lives. Even happier times as a family sting as we know where they individually end up: Some estranged, most broken, and one lost to addiction. It has all the elements of a classic haunted-house ghost story, and Flanagan lets the quieter moments build on the emotional horror. The Haunting of Hill House is a twist-filled masterpiece, and so very close to being Flanagan's best TV show.
1 'Midnight Mass' (2021)
The arrival of a new, younger priest (played by a hypnotic Hamish Linklater) in a small, isolated community brings apparent miracles and a growing malevolence to its fractured people. Midnight Mass is Flanagan's most personal project to date, and it's currently his only series not based on existing material. While The Haunting of Hill House is a towering achievement, Midnight Mass strikes a perfect balance between the supernatural and human drama. That balance allows it to thoroughly explore a wealth of weighty themes, including misplaced faith, death, and the communal damage of addiction.
Some characters retreat to Crockett Island in search of redemption or oblivion, or both. Riley (Zach Gilford) comes home after four years in prison for a drunk driving incident that killed a person. As the town falls under Father Paul's (Linklater) warm yet disconcerting influence, a small band of residents questions what these miracles truly cost. Despite the weighty themes and a slow-burn pace that rewards your patience, it's wrapped in a startlingly original vampire story and remains Flanagan's most compelling series.
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