Mike Flanagan – Missile Test

October Horrorshow: Absentia

Filmmaker Mike Flanagan has made quite a career for himself in horror, having now racked up an impressive filmography as a writer, director, editor, and producer. His credits include a pair of well-received Stephen King adaptations and some excellent single-season television shows. He began, like many other artists, from humble beginnings. Flanagan’s first feature-length film was Absentia, which had a budget of around $70,000, and was partially funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Absentia follows sisters Tricia and Callie (Courtney Bell and Katie Parker). Life hasn’t been easy for the two. Callie, in desperate need of stability, is a recovering drug addict who has come to stay with Tricia in Glendale, California. Meanwhile, Tricia is married, but her husband, Daniel (Morgan Peter Brown), has been missing for the past seven years, and it’s time to have him declared dead in absentia so she can collect on his life insurance policy, get the creditors off her back, and move on with her life. Oh, she’s also into her third trimester, the father being Detective Mallory (Dave Levine), who has been handling her husband’s missing persons case. That is some drama. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Absentia”

October Horrorshow: Hush

A film doesn’t have to have a boatload of jump scares or shocking moments to be frightening. I’ve found that jump scares in particular, when overused, to be detrimental to the quality of a horror film. But Hush, the 2016 film co-written and directed by Mike Flanagan, and starring fellow co-writer Kate Siegel, does not rely on quick instances of surprise to juice up its fright with adrenaline. Rather, Flanagan and Siegel place their protagonist in a situation that is naturally horrifying, and use the tension that creates to settle a viewer into deep, feature-length unease. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hush”

October Horrorshow: Oculus

Of late I have been becoming more and more worried that stories hold no more surprises for me. Books, film, television shows, video games...no matter the delivery method, at some point during the story everything seems so familiar that it can feel as if plot and dialogue are being sprung from my own mind and brought to mediocre life before me. After decades on this earth, it seems that there is nothing new to behold. Rather, it’s the same stories told over and over again, just with new packaging. In fact, this observation of mine is nothing new. Even the bible has something to say. In the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, there is this: “All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, ‘See this, it is new’? Already it has existed for ages Which were before us.” Man, if a two-thousand year old bible verse laments lack of originality, what hope do I have in watching horror movies? Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Oculus”