Mike Flanagan is aware of easy methods to make horror. He additionally is aware of easy methods to make serialized TV. His most up-to-date present is a mixture of many of the issues we’ve come to like about him: his bond with Stephen King, his expertise as an adapter, his nice eye for casting, and his potential to ship pathos. However one key factor is lacking: worry.
Carrie got here out in October of this yr, sparking a lot dialog, with many praising the way it introduced King’s ‘70s novel to 2026. One in all its main criticisms, although, is that it’s not scary, particularly for Flanagan, a man who’s identified for making some actually spooky stuff. Living proof: The Haunting of Hill Home.
Ghosts in plain sight
Launched on Netflix in 2018, The Haunting of Hill Home was Flanagan’s first TV present. Based mostly on Shirley Jackson’s landmark novel of the identical title, Flanagan takes her characters and reimagines them, at occasions scrapping their identities fully. Whereas Jackson collected a bunch of strangers in a haunted home to discover their deepest traumas, Flanagan turned them into siblings, remodeling Hill Home right into a story about their childhood house.
It’s an adaptational selection that many hardcore Jackson followers don’t forgive. Nonetheless, if Flanagan does one factor, it’s commit absolutely to the haunted home idea, taking the psychological worry that permeates the novel and literalizing it. Hill Home is a real home of horrors.
Quite than leaning on soar scares, Hill Home runs on dread, the kind that has your eyes scanning by way of each inch of the display so that you’re not caught off guard by one thing that appears misplaced. “When you return and watch the collection once more, in each episode there’s in all probability someplace between eight and 10 ghosts which can be simply hidden in plain sight that we known as no consideration to however they’re there,” Flanagan informed Bloody Disgusting.
Flanagan additionally revealed that the ghosts had private origins. The tall man with the bowler hat was added as a result of one of many writers is afraid of tall folks. “Folks on stilts freak her out,” he mentioned. “It’s one of the crucial particular and peculiar phobias I’ve heard. All of us thought it was so humorous that we determined to make the tall man.”
And whereas Hill Home delivers loads of scary ghosts for texture and disquiet, some pull double obligation, driving the story too. Flanagan splits Jackson’s Eleanor in two characters, giving her instability to the Crain siblings’ mom, Olivia (Carla Gugino), and her frailty and creativeness to Nell (Victoria Pedretti). He turns the latter into the proper instance of a home cannibalizing its weakest. The collection’ standout episode, “The Bent-Neck Woman,” depends on the twist that (spoiler alert) the ghost that has haunted Nell her total life is herself, pushed mad and killed by the home. Hill Home’s largest twist makes the horror intimate. Carrie’s twist does the alternative, eradicating the horror from her fully.
Promenade in 2026
Warning: Spoilers observe for Carrie’s closing episodes.
Whereas Flanagan’s Carrie sticks nearer to the ebook, protecting its mythology, sequence of occasions, and its characters’ identities, it veers off within the one place it shouldn’t: the promenade. We spend a whole season constructing as much as one of the crucial well-known moments in horror historical past, just for the collection to unnecessarily complicate it. As a substitute of creating the promenade the place the place Carrie breaks and enacts her revenge, it’s Emaline (Thalia Dudek), Carrie’s pal, who bears the vast majority of the blame, taking on Carrie’s physique for many of the bloodbath.
In an interview with Polygon, Flanagan mentioned the promenade scene at size, clarifying what had occurred. He shared that he and the writers needed Carrie to be “100% solely chargeable for” the deaths of key characters, harmless and responsible alike, together with Tommy Ross (Joel Oulette), Billy Nolan (Arthur Conti) and Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton).
They drew the road on the promenade bloodbath. “None of us believed the Carrie White we created would consciously select to kill Principal Grayle (Matthew Lillard), would select to kill Ms. D (Amber Midthunder), and would select to ignite harmless folks round her,” he mentioned.
Carrie has at all times been greater than a narrative a couple of woman setting her promenade on hearth. It’s in regards to the cruelty of excessive schoolers who use their weaker friends to really feel higher about themselves. That comes by way of in Flanagan’s present; as with Hill Home, he has the power to make us care deeply about his characters. However the promenade is the second the place all that cruelty infects Carrie, the place she transcends the web page and turns into a horror icon. It’s there the present flinches. There’s no Bent-Neck Woman second, only a bloodbath with nobody clearly guilty. Is the present known as Emaline?
The Haunting of Hill Home is streaming on Netflix.