After the success of Prime Video's Carrie — and its season two renewal — more eyes are on him and his works than ever before. Luckily, he has a fairly solid backlog of TV shows and films for viewers to peruse. In fact, hardly anybody is creating consistent, high-quality horror for film and television like Flanagan is.
One of the strongest traits of his work is how much it speaks to the human condition, and how well he is able to weave the horror elements into those stories. It's also just a fact that Flanagan hasn't worked on a "bad" show. Each new one has brought a different flavor of grief, connection, and just straight-up horror.
From haunted houses and familial trauma to existential supernatural drama, Flanagan has made a name for himself within the genre. Based on Christopher Pike's YA novel, The Midnight Club follows a group of terminally ill teenagers in a hospice manor who meet after dark to share spooky tales, much like a modern Are You Afraid of the Dark? Co-created with Leah Fong, The Midnight Club is a deviation from Flanagan's normal form.
Originally designed to be a continuing series, Netflix unfortunately canceled it after one season, denying any hopes of a natural conclusion for the story. Even with an open ending, there is a lot to enjoy about The Midnight Club. Because of their structure as stories within a story, the tales that these kids tell can range from spooky to sci-fi, which is more than enough to keep viewers' attention.
This also allowed Flanagan to adapt more of Pike's other stories. Though the unfortunate endgame of the manor is death, The Midnight Club still reminds viewers that there is life worth living, even with the clock ticking down. While Flanagan is no stranger to adapting Stephen King's works at this point, Carrie was the first time that he had adapted one for television.
The expansion into a miniseries allowed for further exploration into the story, and it also gave Flanagan more room to make necessary changes. The decision to adapt it into modern-day high school is certainly one of them, but the series gave Flanagan room to flesh out elements that film runtimes don't allow. When Carrie White's (Summer H.
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