Flanagan, new master of horror with "The Haunting of Bly Manor"

"The Haunting of Bly Manor" is the spiritual sequel to "The Haunting of Hill House", still directed by prodigy Mike Flanagan and still available on Netflix -

In the game of the title of "master of horror", a name always comes up, almost immediately: Stephen King.

The writer has established himself in literature of course, but also beyond, in the collective imagination, on small and large screens.

On the cinema side, however, other names come to mind: John Carpenter first, but also Dario Argento, Wes Craven, George A. Romero ... They have also found themselves, for some, the time of an anthological series , the aptly named

.

Today, several directors, and too few female directors (but the new generation is coming), can claim the title of new master of horror, from the festive James Wan (

) to the political Jordan Peele (

) through Mike Flanagan, whose

spiritual sequel

,

Netflix on Friday.

We have a b̶e̶l̶l̶e̶ ghost story to tell you ...

The Haunting Of Bly Manor, October 9th.

pic.twitter.com/sO8zkPF1ZE

- Netflix France (@NetflixFR) August 31, 2020

Known by Stephen King

Mike Flanagan's name is yet to be identified by the general public, but the 42-year-old American filmmaker has been making his mark on the genre for a decade, with impressive consistency (one film or series per year), and a belief in the horror which commands respect and makes the difference.

He was not (too) afraid to attack not only Stephen King but also Stanley Kubrick with

, the sequel to The Shining.

"I was so anxious at the idea of ​​screwing up that I happened to throw up some, he confided at the release of the film in 2019. I explained to King what I intended to do with the scenes from the Overlook hotel and he approved me.

»Scenes that repeat Kubrick's film identically, or almost.

“These references were intimidating, but essential.

"

If Stephen King dubbed Mike Flanagan on

, it is also because it was not the first time that the director adapted the writer, with

, a camera with his heroine tied to a bed, long considered unsuitable. .

Not for MIke Flanagan who comes out with the honors and congratulations of King, who has, it is true, the easy compliment: "hypnotic, horrible, formidable".

is a Netflix exclusive, and this is another specificity of Mike Flanagan's career, his special relationship with the streaming platform.

Keep only the essence of fear

After several short films and faced with the difficulty of transforming one of them,

, into a feature film, Mike Flanagan decides to make his first film with the means at hand, namely his money and a little crowdfunding (for a total of $ 70,000).

, that's its title, was released live-to-video in the United States in 2011 in relative anonymity, before being bought and offered by Netflix, with more success.

The SVOD service will also save its movie

, Tangled in Rights Stories.

In the meantime, the director has managed to mount

,

in France, a story of old cursed mirror that mixes past and present and which allows him to express all his mastery.

But the film that perhaps best represents his cinema is 

, Still on Netflix, a

where a deaf and dumb writer is attacked by a masked killer in a cabin deep in the woods.

It's hard to be more cliché, and yet the film deploys treasures of inventiveness to maintain the suspense, and put pressure on the spectators and the characters.

It is the trademark of Mike Flanagan, to degrease as much as possible the history, the dialogues, the artifices, to keep only the essence of the fear, and in fact of the human one.

With this approach, he can achieve the impossible, such as transcending the sequel to a bad movie (the

prequel

), or adapting literary horror masters.

The credits for The Haunting of Bly Manor are SU-BLIME.

D-2.

pic.twitter.com/xBxywy7nsB

- Netflix France (@NetflixFR) October 7, 2020

According to the masters of horror and literature

In addition to Stephen King, the director has rubbed shoulders with the model of the genre 

by Shirley Jackson, and by extension his cinema adaptation

by Robert Wise, with the series

on Netflix.

A very free adaptation, a contemporary reading, even a pretext to work on your own obsessions, and to propose as much a horror series as a family drama.

It operates in the same way with

, inspired by the masterpiece

by Henry James, and therefore by another masterpiece, the film

by Jack Clayton.

“The heart of the show is for me is what a ghost is,” says Mike Flanagan in an interview provided by Netflix.

What different things can they be, how are they related to our past, and can we coexist with them?

continues to explore these questions, but from a different perspective.

And from another house.

An old house in the English countryside, where an American nanny arrives to take care of two orphans while the previous one has just died under strange circumstances.

“The Haunting of Bly Manor” hits Netflix October 9.

- Copyright Eike Schroter / Netflix

"We wanted deceptive beauty for the Bly mansion"

If

spoke of family loss and mourning,

evokes more the loss of innocence, the difficulty of growing up, the family that we build.

The house has also changed, brighter, more welcoming.

“We wanted deceptive beauty for the Bly Mansion,” says the creator and director.

Let it be as open as possible, and close slowly like a fly trap.

There is this beautiful line in

 : "Don't worry if your room seems small. The rooms are bigger at night" ".

This season brings together other writings of Henry James and figures from the Gothic novel.

The result is a work, as always with Mike Flanagan, where form and substance are marvelously balanced, even in feats of strength like the episode sequence shot of

and its equivalent (shhh!) In

.

Series

"Marianne" on Netflix, the French horror series ticks all the boxes (clichés?) Of the genre

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