In his 50-year career, Stephen King has published around sixty novels. Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) to It (Andrés Muschietti, 2017), the most famous of them have been adapted for the cinema. But, over the years, the writer has also built a reputation for discrediting most of the adaptations of his books, including The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) is perhaps the most famous example.
Only one filmmaker, American Mike Flanagan, has consistently received praise from the author, so much so that he has adapted three of his novels for the screen and is preparing an adaptation of The Dark TowerKing’s titanic eight-book series. Considered by critics to be one of the great masters of horror today, Mike Flanagan will be awarded its Cheval Noir Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award by the Fantasia festival this year. He will be at the Museum’s cinema on Sunday to accept the honor, but also to host a master class — an opportunity to revisit the films that made him a success.
Born in 1978 in Los Angeles, Flanagan grew up devouring genre and B-movies. Influenced by John Carpenter and Wes Craven, he presented his first short films in festivals, before starting to make a name for himself with Absentia (2011), his first feature film. Made with a budget of $70,000 raised through crowdfunding on Kickstarter, the film had its Canadian premiere at Fantasia.
It is nevertheless the psychological thriller Oculus (2013), based on his 2006 short film of the same name, which brought him to mainstream attention. Set in a non-linear timeline, the film tells the story of two young adults, a brother and sister, who attempt to prove that an antique mirror in their childhood home has driven their parents into a diabolical madness, eventually killing them both. After its world premiere at TIFF, the film grossed over $40 million at the box office, on a budget of just $5 million.
Small and big screen
Another turning point in his career came with his first collaboration with Stephen King. In 2017, he adapted Gerald’s Gamea novel long considered impossible to translate to the screen. Flanagan is said to have succeeded in capturing the work’s claustrophobic essence, earning the rare approval of King and critics alike.
Mitch Davis, Fantasia’s artistic director, points out that Flanagan has the particularity of adapting the writer’s works “by approaching cinematography from a literary point of view, that is to say by focusing first on the construction of his characters and on emotion.” “We have loved his work since his beginnings,” he adds. “His films, all filled with emotion and poetry, really echo his personality.”
Two years later, Flanagan tackled Doctor SleepFollowing The Shining. The film centers on the character of Danny Torrance, the son of Jack Nicholson’s psychopathic father, now an adult, who has never recovered from the trauma he experienced at the Overlook Hotel. In Stephen King’s eyes, the director delivers a work that respects the original material, unlike Kubrick’s adaptation, while offering a captivating and accessible cinematic experience.
In addition to his film successes, Mike Flanagan has made his mark on the television landscape with acclaimed series such as The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020). In 2023, he even adapted literature to television, with the Netflix miniseries The Fall of the House of Usherbased on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. More auteurist than similar horror offerings on Netflix, the series “cleverly transposes the author’s work to the contemporary era,” critic Nina Li Coomes points out in The Atlantic.
Regular collaborations
In both his films and series, the director “explores in depth the themes of mourning, family and loss,” underlines Mitch Davis. Themes that should resurface in his upcoming television adaptation of The Dark Towerwhich King himself considers his magnum opus. While Nikolaj Arcel’s version (2017) with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey is widely considered a failure, many moviegoers have high hopes for this one.
While it is not yet known who will be in the cast, Mitch Davis points out that the filmmaker has “the habit, like John Cassavetes and John Carpenter, of working with the same actors one film after another.” His most frequent partner is his wife, Kate Siegel, who has played in eight of his productions. He has several other regular collaborators, such as Henry Thomas and Katie Parker. “It’s always a pleasure,” concludes Mitch Davis, “to see which actors he chooses for his films, and it will be all the more interesting to hear him talk about his work with them on Sunday in Montreal.”