Mike Flanagan

Wanted this Halloween: terror films, not horror

Yet another Halloween film was released last weekend, this time illogically entitled Halloween Kills. By now, the saga is about as well-known as the Bible, and considerably less enjoyable. There is an ill-intentioned madman on the loose named Michael Myers, who wears a faceless white mask. He enjoys slicing up various members of the supporting cast unfortunate enough to have agents who did not negotiate them multi-picture deals. Opposing Myers, primus inter pares, is the character Laurie Strode, who has on some occasions been portrayed as his understandably resentful sister, and on other occasions as merely a resourceful woman who manages to get the drop on him before, Lazarus-like, he rises again in time for the next installment.

halloween

Mostly ghostly: Henry James haunts Bly Manor

Halloween wasn’t quite the same this year: no trick-or-treating or bobbing for apples, no packed parties, not even a socially distanced haunted house. As a lover of all things horror, I had to rely on television to put the spooky in the season. Netflix’s new series The Haunting of Bly Manor is the sister show to last year’s wildly popular The Haunting of Hill House, created by Doctor Sleep’s Mike Flanagan. (Flanagan is also behind Hush, one of the smartest horror movies I’ve seen in a few years and definitely worth watching.

bly manor