Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor!Since the early 2000s, writer, director and editor Mike Flanagan has been terrifying audiences with his horror movies and TV shows and is also a purveyor of great horror movies himself. He made his name with titles such as the low-budget and surprise success, Absentia from 2011, the well-received Oculus from 2013, and more recently, TV projects such as 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Midnight Club from 2022.
His work has been synonymous with creating unbearing tension, and character-driven narratives, plus he has also brought a fresh spin on horror tropes such as the often misused jump scare. Ultimately, however, his work has produced some of the scariest moments in horror movies, and TV shows of all time.
15 Dani Gets Trapped In A Closet
The Haunting Of Bly Manor: Episode 1 – “The Great Good Place”
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When first seeing this scene, it’s hard to understand the motive behind why Miles and Flora trap poor Dani in the closet with the ghost of her ex-boyfriend. It’s not until you realize that they had good intentions all along that you begin to see sense in what appears to be a hugely cruel act at first.
The claustrophobia depicted in the scene is a great way to foreshadow other events to come in the series. ✕ Remove Ads
There had been one or two jump scares that foreshadowed this moment, but Dani’s blood-curdling screams, as she’s left alone with her dead ex-boyfriend staring at her, truly sends a shiver down the spine. Plus, the claustrophobia depicted in the scene is a great way to foreshadow other events to come in the series.
14 Doris Is Possessed
Ouija: Origin Of Evil (2016)
The Ouija board has been a trope of the horror genre ever since it was mentioned in the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist. The fact that Mike Flanagan managed to conjure up such great scares from it in his 2016 horror prequel, Ouija: Origin of Evil is astonishing. When two young girls, Lina and Doris, use the Ouija board to contact their dead father, what they find instead is a spirit with far more sinister motives. The moments where Doris’ mouth is contorted beyond recognition by Doug Jones’ terrifying demon are truly disturbing.
13 Dan Returns To The Overlook
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Directing the follow-up to the all-time classic 1980 horror movie The Shining with its iconic ending and terrific direction, was always going to be a tough ask, but Flanagan just about managed to adapt Stephen King’s 2013 sequel novel to good effect. One of the most impressive, and terrifying, sequences comes when Ewan McGregor’s Dan Torrence returns to The Overlook Hotel for the first time.
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Not only can the audience sense his apprehension about returning to the scene of his childhood trauma, but the tension is cranked up to 11 when the Overlook’s many spirits overpower him.
12 The Tall Man Terrorizes Luke
The Haunting Of Hill House: Episode 4 – “The Twin Thing”
One of the most bleak and terrifying aspects of The Haunting of Hill House, is that everyone has their own ghost. While that may not initially seem like a bad thing, poor little Luke Crain, whose ghostly companion, The Tall Man, seems to have some major issues with him. The use of lighting to create foreboding shadows, plus the eerie sound design perfectly captures Luke’s terror as he hides under his bed, looking on in terror as he floats past him. Watching Luke cower in fear as he sees his fate in front of him is incredibly unnerving.
11 Removal Of The Mask
Hush (2016)
Home invasion thrillers have become a staple in the horror genre, and Mike Flanagan’s Hush manages to be a tense and disturbing entry in its own right. While it does boast some decent kills, most of the terror comes from the seemingly unassuming nature of the killer’s mask, first glimpsed in a series of well-crafted and tension-building reflections. This becomes almost unbearably tense as the killer eventually takes off his mask to expose his identity to Maddie, meaning that only one of them will survive the night. The deaf girls’ pleas to be spared just add to the horror.
10 Jessie Escapes The Handcuffs
Gerald’s Game (2017)
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Stephen King is a master of the horror genre, there’s no doubt about that. However, his adaptations have not always worked so well on the big screen, which made Flanagan’s decision to make the apparently unfilmable Gerald’s’Game, which is set in just one room, something of a gamble. One disturbing sequence from the book is Jessie Burlingame’s “de-gloving”, where she escapes her handcuffs by cutting a ‘Y’ shape on her wrist and hand in order to peel her skin off, and free the cuff. It’s as disgusting as it sounds, but Flanagan nailed the scene, and a shocking twist ending.
9 Peter Gets Dragged Into The Lake
The Haunting Of Bly Manor: Episode 5 – “The Altar Of The Dead”
Peter Quint is one of the more intriguing, and seemingly most powerful, characters in The Haunting of Bly Manor. When he’s dragged to a lake and drowned with apparent ease by a more powerful force, it becomes one of the most shocking sequences in the series. Peter’s character had been introduced in a frightening, intense passage in the source material, The Turn of the Screw, so when the ghost of Viola Willoughby, The Lady in the Lake, drags him to his watery demise, it’s a shocking and pivotal moment in the series.
8 Award-Winning Jump Scares
The Midnight Club: Episode 1 – “The Final Chapter” (2022)
Jump scares can often be the worst way in which a horror movie elicits fear from its audience, unless you do them the right way, such as the underwater head reveal from Spielberg’s 1975 classic Jaws. Even Mike Flanagan hates jump scares, so when he managed to break a Guinness World Record for most consecutive jump scares in 2022, he must have been pleasantly surprised.
Related The Midnight Club Show vs Book: Biggest Differences Explained There are many differences between Mike Flanagan’s Netflix horror show The Midnight Club and Christopher Pike’s original 1994 book of the same name.
The sequence is incredibly well crafted and while jump scares can traditionally be seen as a gimmick, Flanagan manages to make them unbearably tense, over and over, again.
7 Death Of A Sister
Oculus (2013)
Oculus was one of the first proper horror movies that helped to propel Flanagan into the mainstream world of horror, and deservedly so. His Lovecraftian tale of two siblings, Tim and Kaylie, who attempt to unravel the mystery of their parent’s murder, is haunting, and often very disturbing.
The moment when Tim activates a switch to destroy the mirror, and unwittingly kills his sister, is devastating.
The siblings try to document the powers of a mirror that drove their parents to their deaths when they were just kids, but in doing so, they unwittingly become part of its doomed existence. The moment when Tim activates a switch to destroy the mirror, and unwittingly kills his sister, is devastating.
6 Hannah’s Death is Revealed
The Haunting Of Bly Manor: Episode 5 – “The Altar Of The Dead”
Episode 5 of the excellent The Haunting of Bly Manor series, provides a major revelation about one of its main characters, Hannah Grose, that neatly unveils something that had been alluded to throughout the series; that Hannah was in fact a ghost. The clues to her death were there for all to see; the way she scratched her neck, the cracks in walls she saw, and how she would often space out, all alluded to the fact that she was dead. The moment this is unveiled, as she looks down the well at her dead body, is incredibly disturbing.
5 Riley Says Goodbye
Midnight Mass: Episode 5 – “Book V: Gospel”
One of the most heartbreaking, and ultimately scary, moments in all of Mike Flanagan’s movies and TV shows, comes in episode 5 of the great Netflix show Midnight Mass amidst all of its hidden meanings. After having learned about Father Paul’s plan, and being turned into a vampire, Riley reveals everything to his friend Erin, while on a boat off the coast of the seaside town.
Related Midnight Mass’ Hidden Meaning & Central Theme Explained Midnight Mass is surely a story about religious fanaticism as it intersects with horror, but beneath this is the underlying theme of forgiveness.
Erin, who fears Riley is only there to devour her blood, screams as she watches her true love sacrifice himself to the sunlight, burning to ashes and death in the process.
4 Death Of The Baseball Boy
Doctor Sleep (2019)
The peril and death of children in horror movies has been one of the ongoing tropes of the genre, but Mike Flanagan managed to up the ante with just how brutally Doctor Sleep, the follow-up to The Shining, dealt with it. The movie’s antagonists, the True Knot, are a group of “psychic vampires” who feast on kids with the ability to ‘shine’ and do so by inflicting pain and torture on the victims.
This moment is truly shocking.
In one very disturbing scene, they torture and kill a young boy named Bradley Trevor, and although the movie may not match the endlessly quotable original for outright terror and originality, this moment is truly shocking.
3 The Bent-Neck Lady’s Sad Reveal
The Haunting Of Hill House: Episode 5 – “The Bent-Neck Lady”
There are several twists and turns in Mike Flanagan’s great horror series, The Haunting of Hill House. However, none can match the shock factor of one particular reveal in the episode titled “The Bent-Neck Lady”. Ever since staying at the Hill House, Victoria Pedretti’s Nell Crain had terrifying visions of the mysterious Bent-Neck Lady, and decides to go back to the house to investigate. Once there, however, she’s tricked into hanging herself by the ghost of her mother, only for it to be revealed that Nell was The Bent-Neck Lady all along.
2 The Church Massacre
Midnight Mass: Episode 6 – “Book VI: Act Of The Apostles”
Influenced in some part by the mass suicide in Jonestown in 1978, episode 6 of Midnight Mass presents familiar imagery when Father Paul reveals who he truly is and also what he has planned for the town. He then urges his congregation to drink poison in order for them to be reborn as vampires. The subsequent horror that unfolds as most of them do so, and come back as bloodthirsty demons, is delightfully morbid, and seeing them succumb to their demons is truly terrifying in its own right.
1 The Car Jump Scare
The Haunting of Hill House: Episode 8 “Witness Marks” (2018)
This is another excellent example of a jump scare that is crafted just about perfectly because you never see it coming. Sisters Theo and Shirley are arguing in a car because Theo had the audacity to kiss Shirley’s husband, which, to be fair, is a good starting point for some tension. However, just as you think the tension couldn’t be cranked up anymore, Nell Crain’s ghost appears from out of nowhere between the feuding siblings, scaring everybody half to death in the process.