Mike Flanagan’s Favorite Show Is a Drama with 98% on RT Dubbed ‘One of the Very Best’

Mike Flanagan has become the most important horror filmmaker of our time. In 2018, he signed a deal with Netflix, which gave him the long-awaited opportunity to create an anthology work.

He directed and wrote The Haunting of Hill House, a series that brought incredible success to Flanagan and had amazing ratings for streaming. Even the master of the horror industry, Stephen King, called it a work of genius.

Since then, Flanagan has been delighting fans of horror every fall with a miniseries with a special, creepy atmosphere that is conveyed not by fountains of blood, but by masterfully written dialogue and brilliant direction.

At the same time, most of his works are adaptations of novels in a modern way or in a new form. For example, The Haunting of Hill House is a loose interpretation of Shirley Jackson's novel of the same name, and The Fall of the House of Usher is a hodgepodge of stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

Mike Flanagan is Impressed by Interview with the Vampire

So it comes as no surprise that the director chose another adaptation as his favorite TV show – Interview with the Vampire. Mike wrote on his X account:

“INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE on @AMC_TV just perfectly stuck the landing on an absolutely exceptional second season. Damn. One of the very best shows on TV. Huge congrats to the entire cast and crew. WOW.”

And it's not just the director admiring the new adaptation of Anne Rice's vampire classic – the recently released second season has a 98% rating from critics and 84% from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes.

Interview with the Vampire is a High-Quality Drama with a Touch of Supernatural

It is an undeniable fact that vampires and melodrama are inextricably linked. Apparently, people realized that an older man looking younger than his years was more sexy than scary. Anne Rice's novel also influenced this: before that, only Bram Stoker's Dracula had such success.

After 1976, the year of the novel's publication, vampires ceased to be scary. Cinematography was not particularly eager to release a new Nosferatu (but now we are eagerly awaiting Robert Eggers' movie). Since then, the entire pop culture has begun a slow movement towards more sensual stories about vampires.

The new version of Interview with the Vampire does not try to scare or make you fall in love – it stays somewhere in the middle. Melodramatic and horror episodes are present, but the series is more inclined towards pure drama.

Creators Stayed Faithful to the Source & Added Some Refreshing Details

The local vampires are not afraid of wooden stakes, their skin does not sparkle in the sun, but burns slowly; the only thing that shines is the vampires' eyes. Rice herself destroyed some canons in the original, but the creators of the series also added some details.

This helps the experienced viewer not to yawn while watching: instead of a typical vampire moment, something will always happen that you would not expect from a series based on Anne Rice's work.

The creators have managed to carefully update the familiar story without harming the legacy of its creator, but on the contrary, enriching it, which is extremely rare in television.

Source: Mike Flanagan on X