Mike Flanagan Has a Great Horror Recommendation Ahead of Halloween

Mike Flanagan, the mastermind behind some of Netflix’s top horror series—Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass, and The Haunting of Hill House—has a serious love affair with Stephen King adaptations. Not only did he helm the sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, but he also burst onto Netflix with his hit Gerald’s Game, another King-based thriller.

Flanagan, who’s now redeveloping Blumhouse’s Exorcist franchise after David Gordon Green’s reboot faltered at the box office, is keeping the Stephen King train rolling with an eight-episode series adaptation of Carrie for Amazon. According to Deadline, he’s even in discussions with King about taking another crack at The Dark Tower.

But the Carrie news is really just a gateway to recommend another horror gem: Oddity, currently streaming on AMC+/Shudder or available for rent. This flick, written and directed by Damian McCarthy, caught Flanagan’s attention, and he took to his Letterboxd account to rave about it:

“Absolutely excellent. Damian McCarthy’s engrossing, terrifying follow-up to his atmospheric and chilling CAVEAT is a masterclass in dread, atmosphere, and tension.

“An arresting opening sequence involving a woman answering the door to an unsettling stranger blossoms into a tale of supernatural revenge, mournful spirits, and buried secrets.”

Flanagan’s praise aligns with the general consensus—Oddity boasts a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes—and our own critic Jason Adams at Pajiba agrees:

“McCarthy draws all of these plots out to deliciously excruciating lengths, edging us toward all hell breaking loose by turning it into a shell game—by its last act we don’t know where to look to be afraid because the scare could be coming from a dozen different places. The film trains us to peer into its many inscrutable darknesses, looking for its monster, grimly unsure which monstrous face might be suddenly peering back. It’s overload underplayed, and it’s a magnificent feat of trickery.”

So, if you’re searching for the perfect spooky season watch and have already caught Smile 2 in theaters, give Oddity a go. It comes with Mike Flanagan’s seal of approval.