Any Other Fans?? Personal Top Flanagan Films

Oh wow, you really did soften on Midnight Mass given your rankings there. Nice...

Without knowing your specific reasons why, I can see that Bly would be the one thing to dislike. It's kind of sloppy in the way the episodes flow and how the plot was put together. It's not as tightly put together as HH or MM for sure. I think it just got under my skin on multiple levels; it really tore at my heart over and over again (hell it even got me to sympathize with Peter Quint who I despite as an evil asshole). By the time I got to the final episode, the emotions had snowballed and I was totally engaged with everything was happening. Course...maybe Bly is just emotionally manipulative...lol but even so, it got me. XD

absentia and oculus are among my favourite movies of any genre from the last 10 or so years.

Straight 8s, that's quite amusing :D Definitely check out Absentia. It's like his first full length film, I think. A bit rough around the edges in terms of filming/acting, I have to say, it was probably the last of his films that I finally got to watch, and I think it still holds up even after seeing his modern filmography.

i definitely second that absentia recommendation from acidrain above.

"This is my personal top list. Not entirely speaking to their objective quality, like, I think Hill House is an objectively better series than Bly on multiple levels."

there's a difference between favourite and best.

my favourite flanagan is absentia, even though it's a very flawed movie. it's almost definitely his worst in terms of tech qualities and acting. even the writing's a bit clunky at times. but i love it in a way i don't any of his other films except oculus.

I feel like HH was like the fulfillment with what he pulled off in Oculus with alternating between a past narrative and a present narrative so it was really cool to see that that was his approach to HH. I'd like to see him continue to do different things, but I'd also love to see him play with nonlinearity again. (But maybe he doesn't fetishize time like Nolan lol.) The stories he could tell with intertwining sequences from people's lives.

Cool that you ranked Doctor Sleep relatively highly. I feel like when I see people gush over Hill House, they don't necessarily rank Doctor Sleep similarly. I feel like that film would have stood out a lot more if anything Shining-related didn't have to fall beneath the shadow of the Kubrick film. And as an adaptation, I definitely think it did the book(s) justice while still being entertaining on its own.

Oo, do report back. The fact that you've put MM above hill house...I'd be very interested to see how you feel about Bly.