People who call Stephen King a horror writer get him all wrong. There are horrible, terrifying things that happen in his stories, sure. Most of them, anyway. But no matter how ghoulish, how gruelling things become in splashes of pig’s blood, or flashes of clown’s makeup, those macabre charms are fleeting. They’re interstitial selling points in stories crafted by a consummate, and sometimes saccharine, humanist.

A few filmmakers have picked up on this over the years, although not nearly as many as those who skim right past King’s warmth in a rush to gawk at the shadows. And then there’s Mike Flanagan, a fellow sentimentalist who happens to love painting his fireside tableaus with various shades of charcoal. Like King, Flanagan has made a career in the genre space of the sick and sinister

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