Mike Flanagan has brought the curtain down on the inaugural SXSW London with the U.K. premiere of his latest feature “The Life of Chuck.”
Despite the feature being the filmmaker’s first major foray away from horror, in a wide-ranging Q&A before the screening at London’s Barbican Centre Flanagan discussed his work in the genre (and love of it), his ongoing collaborations with Stephen King and even offered some news information about his upcoming “Carrie” TV series.
On the ongoing shift in perception towards horror, Flanagan said that the genre “tends to struggle to get credibility,” arguing that for each cycle of breakout titles — and even Oscar wins such as “Get Out” — “a lot of people outside the genre remain perpetually surprised” by its success. “Every now and then, when you see Jordan Peele win an Academy Award, everyone talks about how this legitimized the horror genre, and then they forget.”
Unlike other genres, Flanagan said horror allowed filmmakers to “talk about things that otherwise are much harder to talk about in entertainment.” He pointed to “Night of the Living Dead” as an example.
“If George Romero wanted to make make a film about racism in America in the 60s, he could have made that film, and it would have spoken to people who were interested in having that conversation. But instead, he made ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ and people went to be scared of the zombies, and in the last moments, you realize the story he’s been telling, and that story then reaches a much wider audience and has much more impact.”
Added Flanagan: “I think that’s the beauty of horror. You get to talk about incredible things that, if you were to just do it without the wrapping of the genre, you would radically limit its reach and its impact.”
Flanagan also touched on his upcoming series adaptation of King’s “Carrie,” in the works at Amazon, noting that “horror was really hard to do TV, because horror relies on you completely hijacking the viewer’s senses,” while when people watch TV they’re “surrounded by distractions.”
Much has already been discussed about the “Carrie” series, Flanagan recently admitting to Variety that King had originally been against the idea, telling him “Leave her alone, she’s been through enough,” but had now given him his blessing. Speaking in London, he revealed that his wife and frequent on-screen collaborate Kate Siegel would be directing an episode of the show, marking her first time directing for TV and her first time directing a project being produced by her husband.
While Flanagan’s career has mostly been showered in glory, he opened up about one misfire. Asked if he’d ever directed a horror that was “fun and balls to the wall” and didn’t “emotionally cripple the viewer,” he pointed to 2016’s Blumhouse sequel “Ouija: Origin of Evil.”
“It was really fun,” he said. “But the funny thing was that it really underperformed compared to ‘Ouija’ one, so I killed that franchise, which I still have to apologize to Jason Blum for every time I see him.”
SXSW London was opened June 2 by London mayor Sadiq Khan. Throughout the week, speakers included Idris Elba, Julian Lennon and Nile Rodgers plus the CEOs of Twitch, WPP, OnlyFans and Google Deepmind.
Variety parent company PMC owns the SXSW franchise.
