Thanks to 'It,' you're going to see the studios take a lot more chances on a very specific vision. An R-rated horror film about children being eaten by a monster that lives in a sewer is not normally something that a studio would throw their weight behind. But we've seen the success of it, which props everyone up.

Mike Flanagan

Categorized in : You Children Success Vision

Depending on how 'Doctor Sleep' does, we'll see what movie opportunities there will be.

Mike Flanagan

doctor will see sleep

Midnight Mass' is kind of my baby; I've been working on that for six years. I started writing it while 'Oculus' was in preproduction, and it's a very personal, scary little story.

Mike Flanagan

personal story writing baby

I always tend to tilt dark on an ending, because I feel like, especially with horror movies, those are the endings that don't evaporate. Those are the ones that stick with you.

Mike Flanagan

ending feel you dark

I do not have the female experience. I don't, and I strive to understand it, but I'll never truly be able to. I don't think any men will, really.

Mike Flanagan

understand think experience men

Whenever you take a general meeting, inevitably you run out of things to talk about, they'd always say, 'What's your dream project?' I would always pull out 'Gerald's Game.' If they knew the book, they'd say, 'Well, that's unfilmable.' If they didn't know the book it would take about 30 seconds of my pitch to say, 'That's not a movie.'

Mike Flanagan

game you dream book

When I first started out and would go on pitch meetings, there was always this kind of eye-roll that would come with pitching a horror movie when you were dealing with the studios. Unless it was viewed as a cheap product that could turn a lot of profit, there wasn't a lot of interest in making it good.

Mike Flanagan

good go you meetings

When horror is about something - capital-A about - that's when it's really landing.

Mike Flanagan

about something landing horror

Audiences have grown to equate being startled with being scared, and will complain that a movie 'isn't scary enough' if it doesn't have enough jump scares... so that means that a lot of studios will insist on shoving jump scares into a movie, regardless of character or story structure, thinking it 'makes it scarier.'

Mike Flanagan

jump story character thinking

A viewer's imagination is a powerful storyteller, and can often come up with things way more frightening than what you can explicitly show in a horror movie... try to engage that imagination, and the results can be magical.

Mike Flanagan

you powerful imagination way

For me it's about creating and sustaining tension for as long as possible, and I'm not generally interested in allowing that tension to be deflated, especially by a jump scare.

Mike Flanagan

jump me tension long

I'm a firm believer that what you don't see is always scarier than what you do.

Mike Flanagan

than see you always

At home, people are more likely to be distracted than in a theatrical environment. They're checking their phones, pausing to get a snack, or sometimes jumping from show to show.

Mike Flanagan

environment home sometimes people

Building and sustaining tension is always my priority, so home entertainment provides challenges to that.

Mike Flanagan

always building challenges home

I'm wide open to evidence of the supernatural, but I also think that the majority of those experiences are probably natural phenomena we don't understand just yet.

Mike Flanagan

just understand think natural

Well when I hear 'slasher' I think about the 80s.

Mike Flanagan

i-think hear well think

Horror is fascinating because it's so seasonal and it's like you've got these periods where slasher movies are in and it's like everyone loves them. Next thing you know zombies are in. Then vampires are acceptable.

Mike Flanagan

everyone movies know you

There is only one act of violence in 'The Strangers' and it comes at the very, very end... the movie could have worked just as well if we didn't see it, in my opinion.

Mike Flanagan

strangers end opinion violence

What you don't want is for violence and gore to become more important than character and structure. A lot of slasher movies from the eighties were only focused on violence and gore, which robs the human beings in the story of any empathetic reaction from the audience, and instead makes them cheer for the gore.

Mike Flanagan

movies you violence character

I'm a Stephen King fanatic.

Mike Flanagan

fanatic stephen-king king

I'm sure many more people saw 'Hush' in the first weekend it was on Netflix than saw 'Oculus' in theatres.

Mike Flanagan

more netflix weekend people