Mike Flanagan's Carrie lands on 7 October — five Netflix miniseries to get through before it does
Mike Flanagan’s ‘Carrie’ arrives on Prime Video on 7 October 2026—plenty of time to let five of his Netflix thriller miniseries crawl under your skin first.
Let me just say it up front: Mike Flanagan might be the only modern horror director who actually delivers better nightmares on the telly than in the cinema. While a load of his film work is bloody decent (Doctor Sleep deserves a knighthood, frankly), it's his string of Netflix miniseries that's really put him in the genre hall of fame. If you like your spooks layered with actual stories – and not just cheap frights – Flanagan's five Netflix runs are worth your time, especially if you want to binge your way up to Halloween.
The first episode of The Midnight Club set a Guinness World Record with 21 scripted jump scares.
How We Got Here
Between 2018 and 2023 Flanagan managed a near-unbroken stint as Netflix's horror MVP. He wrote, produced and directed five miniseries for them, each landing somewhere between "really bloody unnerving" and "emotionally devastating". He’s since packed up for Amazon Prime Video (his Carrie reimagining is due this October), but that original Netflix run is still standing tall in their catalogue, and if you’ve missed any of them, now’s as good a time as any to catch up. Here’s a look at the shows, in the order they landed, with the must-know bits for each.
- The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
- The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
- Midnight Mass (2021)
- The Midnight Club (2022)
- The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
Haunting Beginnings: The Hill House Effect
The one that started it all was The Haunting of Hill House, dropping in 2018. Now, this was Flanagan’s first shot at a Netflix mini, but he treated it like the gig of his career: he directed every single episode. That gives the whole thing a really cohesive, personal touch. The series pinches its premise from Shirley Jackson’s 1959 classic novel (and, by extension, it’s basically a high-wire act of remaking Robert Wise’s 1963 film The Haunting – not that abysmal 1999 disaster). Against the odds, Flanagan absolutely nails it. He brings the right amount of reverence and fresh thinking so it actually complements the old classic but also stands on its own legs.
The cast – most of whom he’d use again and again, including Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel, and Lulu Wilson – feel like a little repertory troupe at this point. The show didn’t just land well; with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s still widely cited as not just Flanagan’s best, but one of the strongest things Netflix has ever put out. That first hit would set up his whole partnership with the streamer, and gives new meaning to the term “start as you mean to go on”.
Ghosts and Romance: Bly Manor
Next came The Haunting of Bly Manor in 2020, which takes on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, plus a heap of other James short stories for good measure. Unlike its predecessor, Bly Manor doesn’t run two timelines so much as shuffle whole bits of narrative around, keeping you guessing. It’s not as full-on scary, to be honest, but what it loses in pure terror, it picks up in haunted heartbreak. Bly’s all about love that doesn’t let go, both metaphorically and, well, literally, this being Flanagan.
This was always going to be a tough follow-on, and it didn’t top Hill House – but it settled in with an 88% Rotten Tomatoes score and is arguably the most daringly sentimental of his bunch. If you thought horror directors only cared about jump scares, this’ll set you right.
Blood and Faith: Midnight Mass
By 2021, Flanagan decided to try something different – no adaptation, no safety net. Midnight Mass is his one original outing for Netflix; just him, working out his obsessions about death, faith, and addiction in a completely made-up world. He directs every episode again, and the result is frankly disturbing in all the right ways. There’s a hefty dose of vampire mythos but grafted onto a meditation on lost love, alcoholism, grief and existential dread. Hamish Linklater turns up and starts knocking out monologues that, in the wrong hands, would be a slog – but somehow he turns them into proper drama.
It’s definitely a change in tone – think more Stephen King small-town horror than the haunted houses of the previous two, and with its own brooding, personal touch. Rotten Tomatoes: 87%.
Young Adult Terrors: The Midnight Club
If you were after something slightly different from Flanagan, The Midnight Club is where he does an anthology-horror-for-young-adults. Sort of like Goosebumps if the kids were terminally ill, and the scares were marked TV-MA. Based on Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel, but with bits from nearly 30 other Pike stories sewn in, it shifts the premise: a hospice full of teens spend nights spinning scary tales and facing existential reality.
True to form, it got another good swing with critics; 85% Rotten Tomatoes. But what really stands out is the structure: every episode feels like its own flavour of horror because of all the stories the kids share. And – as mentioned up top – the very first episode ended up in the Guinness Book for most scripted jump scares in a single episode at 21, which may be both a badge of honour and a polite warning.
Poe, Succession and Full Circle: Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher in 2023 is Flanagan’s latest (and so far, final) outing with Netflix, and he brought in co-director Michael Fimognari to help out. They went all in on the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe, stitching together not just ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ but threads from various Poe stories into a single, rather grand, gothic melodrama. This isn’t about jump scares or cheap tricks; it’s more about a relentless, ornate doom that seeps in from the first frame. It’s the sort of adaptation most people would botch, but Flanagan seems unbothered by the challenge.
The result: the best Rotten Tomatoes score for him since Hill House, at 91%, and it was number one on Netflix the week it landed. If you like your horror with a bit of family collapse in the mix – think Succession, but with proper ghosts – the cast (Carla Gugino, Mark Hamill, Bruce Greenwood, Mary McDonnell) are having a ball as they go full gothic. It’s dark, theatrical and surprisingly fun for something with so much death.