Mike Flanagan

“The Haunting of Hill House” has just arrived on Netflix! Hurray! The 10 part adaptation of Shirley Jackson's short story (which has already spawned one all time classic scary film) arrives courtesy of Mike Flanagan, who may well be Mildly Unnerving's favourite horror director working right now. So to celebrate I've ranked his feature films from my least amazing to most amazing. “Absentia” is absent because I haven't seen it.

Before I Wake

The first half of “Before I Wake” is a perfect demonstration of Flanagan's strengths as a director. There are some subtle background scares that some viewers may not even notice first time through, an atmosphere of creeping dread and characters you may actually care about. There are also some moments of genuine wonder when the supernatural shenanigans start kicking off. However, the second half is a bit of a let down, with the old horror mistake of over-explaining dragging stuff down a bit. Still very much worth your time though.

Ouija: Origins of Evil

Wherein our man does a prequel to “Ouija”, which was no-one's idea of a good film. He makes “Origins of Evil” a million times better than it has any right to be though, bringing his trademark subtly to bear where the original was obnoxious and loud. It dips towards the obvious towards the end, but the increasingly bleak and hopeless atmosphere is rare for such a mainstream outing.

Hush

A deaf woman living alone in an isolated house in the woods is menaced by a masked killer. “Hush” takes this simple premise and runs with it, putting some inventive slants on the old slasher film tropes. It also features a great performance by co-writer Kate Siegel (who is also in “Haunting of Hill House”) and doesn't bother with a motive for the antagonist, which is entirely the right choice.

Gerald's Game

An adaptation of an unadaptable Stephen King novel, the success of which presumably got Flanagan the gig on “The Shining” sequel “Doctor Sleep”. Artfully turning a novel that was very heavy on internal monologues into something filmable by having characters show up as figments of the protagonist's imagination, this only amps up the terror when the Moonlight Man makes his appearance. Faithful to King's novel and showing the director's usual restraint when it comes to the scares, it still makes time for one of the most harrowing and gory scenes I've seen for a while.

Oculus

As far as your correspondent is concerned “Oculus” is a legitimate masterpiece. A brother and sister seek to prove that a haunted mirror was responsible for the death of their parents 10 years earlier. The subtle scares are present and correct, but thing that really got under my skin was mercilessly escalating atmosphere of dread. Perfectly paced even as it switches between past and present (before the two start merging) and constantly wrong-footing the audience and the protagonists as to what is real and what isn't, “Oculus” is one of the few films that I find actually frightening.

All films are on Netflix. Except Oculus unfortunately