‘The Fall of the House of Usher“is the latest horror hit from Netflix in collaboration with the director Mike Flanagan. The miniseries has garnered countless praise, be it from critics, receiving an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, or from the general public, receiving an 8.1 rating on IMDB. Director Mike Flanagan has already scored five television productions with Netflix, but the streaming partnership with the filmmaker began not with series, but with two films: “Hush Death Listens” (2016) and “Dangerous Game” (2017).
Despite this very fruitful partnership, as is generally the case in our capitalist and competitive world, Mike Flanagan received a, let’s say, financially more attractive offer from a Netflix competitor, Amazon Prime Video, and decided to change teams. We can’t wait to see what the director will do in new countries, but for now we can enjoy the varied menu the filmmaker has put together for it Netflix. As already mentioned, in a total of five programs from 2018 to the last, published on October 12 of this year, Flanagan managed to adapt great classics of horror literature into modern versions with a very special touch and very well developed characters, without the countless To forget scary moments.
In fact, we can stitch together these programs that almost always feature the same cast the director’s trusted clique. In honor of his most recent and apparently last work alongside him Netflix (at least for now) we decided to make a list of the director’s five series on the platform, ranked from worst to best. Check it out below and don’t forget to leave your order in the comments.
One of the most recent attacks by Mike Flanagan on Netflix,’The Midnight Club‘ is considered to be, let’s say, less satisfactory than his performance. So much so that it was canceled after the first season and only 10 episodes aired. Unlike all the others we’ll see below on the list, The Midnight Club was the only one that wasn’t a miniseries but was planned as a multiseason series. Especially since it is an adaptation of a series of horror books for young adults by the author Christopher Pike, published in 1994. This means that the series is also an adaptation of a more recent work. The plot concerns a group of young patients in a hospital, all of whom are terminally ill. They meet there hidden every evening to tell horror stories; and so we gradually get to know them a little better.
This was the second series of Mike Flanagan on Netflix. Many think:The Haunting of Bly Manor“a spiritual sequel to”The Haunting of Hill House‘, his first series success. Many of the actors repeat themselves here especially Victoria Pedretti, the young actress who caused a stir with her performance in the first part and who everyone wanted to see again. However, it is safe to say that the actress did not score as much in the new show and the series did not create as much of a stir as its predecessor.
Flanagan’s bet here was to adapt The Turn of the Screw, a gothic book Henry James wrote in 1898. As always, the director gives the story a unique modern take on the classic, which tells of a couple of little orphaned brothers in a large, halfabandoned house after their parents died. After the death of the first nanny who looked after the duo, a new one is hired and comes on site with the task of looking after the children. However, something else can be found there.
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This is one of my personal favorites, and it gives me courage to place it only at third place as it is a strong contender for the number one spot (if all that matters is who is talking to you). What happens is that we’re not basing this on personal taste, but on an average between reviews from critics and the general public. However, its placement in third place is not a disadvantage and only testifies to the quality of the first two points, which we will see below. This is neither a classic work of literature nor a more modern adaptation of horror fairy tales. This is the first original series of Mike Flanagan at Netflix, i.e. a story that was not based on any previous material. Well, in parts.
However, what happens is thatmidnight fair‘ is not an official adaptation, we are dealing here with a magnificent homage that cannot hide its inspiration in a literary work of Stephen King: “The Vampires of Salem”. King’s book about vampires received its own adaptation in the 1970s, making it the second audiovisual product to bear the author’s name. However, unlike Carrie and The Shining, The Vampires of Salem became a twopart miniseries that was shown on television rather than released in theaters. A modern version appears to be pending and has been pulled from Warner’s release schedule. We doubt it would be as good as “Midnight Mass” anyway. In the plot, a man returns to his small town only to discover a nefarious plan for a dark creature to rule over the community.
‘The Fall of the House of Usher‘ is the latest hit from Netflixand marks the director’s farewell Mike Flanagan as the creator of successful productions on the platform. As I said, there were five in total, most of which were popular with audiences and hailed as some of the best streaming programs in horror. We feel Flanagan’s commitment to each new project, his commitment and his passion. The filmmaker delivers attractive storylines and interesting characters to drive his plot forward. And as we can see, the filmmaker says goodbye to the partnership with a clear conscience and is now ready to provide us with more highquality material on Amazon.
Here Flanagan chooses to focus on some of the author’s major works Edgar Allan Poe, unmatched when it comes to classic gothic horror books. The author published many of his short stories in the 1830s becoming one of the most adapted to cinema and audiovisual authors of all time. Naturally Mike Flanagan I would not fail to honor him. And he did it as a kind of macabre “succession,” in which brothers in a large family who own a pharmaceutical empire compete to become their father’s business successors. The director’s new work, as always, has a lot of drama, without forgetting the spooky and dark atmosphere.
After being the first to climb onto the podium and win the gold medal, we have the first ever. ‘The Haunting of Hill House‘ was the first series of Mike Flanagan on Netflix, and its runaway success opened doors for all of the director’s other programs on the platform. Here the filmmaker is inspired by the classic “The Hauting of Hill House”. Shirley Jackson; and his first film adaptation “Desafio do Além” (1963). In 1999, Steve Spielberg produced a modern cinematic version of the fairy tale called The Cursed House, which unfortunately relied more on the special effects of the time rather than compelling characters or a truly frightening narrative. The result therefore fell well short of expectations.
In all previous versions, a group of people undergo an experiment organized by a sleep disorder specialist. They all agree to spend the night in a house that is said to be haunted. In Flanagan’s version on Netflix, the characters become members of the same family, plagued by past tragedies, like some kind of curse that keeps coming back to haunt them. When released, the program caught the attention of all fans of highquality audiovisual works, showing the details of its creation, such as uncut sequence shots and craft moments based on practical effects during filming. The kind of work championed by great directors such as Christopher Nolan. In other words: immediately Mike Flanagan proved that his production was not just any horror work, but a work created in a precise manner and that it would go down in the annals of the genre.