How one novel inspired Mike Flanagan’s career: “It opened a door that changed my life”
From its nascent beginnings as a film genre in the 1930s, horror has always been heavily inspired by literature.
Although the 1931 adaptation of Dracula was the first official horror film, even FW Murnau’s enduring classic German Expressionist film, 1992’s Nosferatu, was an unofficial adaptation of the iconic vampire novel. It makes sense, then, that we’re still interested in the literary inspirations behind contemporary horror directors.
With early horror often looking to classic literature, there has been one resounding literary presence in the genre since the 1970s: Stephen King. So, it’s no surprise that Mike Flanagan credits King with inspiring his whole career. Speaking to Suntup Press, Flanagan recounted the King novel that changed it all for him: “The first King novel I remember reading was It, and I was in fifth grade. It absolutely traumatised me”.
This probably wasn’t an uncommon introduction to the horror genre for most children of the 1980s, given It’s plot follows a group of teenagers being terrorised by an evil shapeshifting entity. What is interesting is that Flanagan wasn’t looking for horror when he came across King’s iconic novel; in fact, he was apparently averse to the genre as a child. “I was generally a very scared kid. I couldn’t watch horror movies at all… I found It at the library and gave it a shot, thinking it wouldn’t be as traumatic as a scary movie.”
Of course, anyone who has read the book knows that this was a misguided conclusion drawn by a fifth grader, as the novel was known to terrify even adults who read it. And, while Flanagan concludes that he was “dead wrong”, it also changed his life, making him both a lifelong fan of King and a horror devotee. After all, the filmmaker hasn’t just made original horror films, but he has adapted two of King’s novels, rather successfully, in the eyes of the writer, I might add.
First came the 2017 adaptation of Gerald’s Game, King’s suspense novel that follows the psychological experiences of a woman left handcuffed to a bed after her husband’s sudden death. While many of King’s novels have seen multiple TV and film adaptations—It, Carrie, The Shining, also as a mini series—Gerald’s Game has only the one, as it was long considered “unfilmable”. Flanagan himself thought this was the case for a long time, given the novel’s contained setting and intimate psychological framing. However, Flanagan’s adaptation received favourable reviews, even from King himself, who called it “horrifying and hypnotic”.
But the filmmaker’s most ambitious adaptation was his 2019 “sequel” to one of the most famous horror films of all time, The Shining. Doctor Sleep was technically an adaptation of King’s sequel book, but it also attempted to pay homage to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film. King was renowned for hating Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel, so Flanagan was in for a tough time, but he worked closely with the author for approval. In the end, King was more than happy, admitting that Doctor Sleep redeemed everything he disliked about Kubrick’s adaptation.
So, not only did literature inspire Flanagan’s career, but it has, in many ways, sustained it. The director’s The Haunting anthology series was also inspired by more classical works of horror fiction, and he has two further King adaptations on the way in the form of Carrie and The Dark Tower series.
