Netflix's Horror Masterpiece With 93% RT Rating Delivers A Masterclass In One-Take Storytelling

Published Oct 8, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. Although Netflix’s ten-episode horror masterpiece is worth watching from start to finish, Mike Flanagan’s best show still peaks with an incredibly ambitious, virtuoso one-shot episode. As the wait for Mike Flanagan’s Prime Video version of Carrie finally comes to an end, there is no better time to look back on the horror auteur’s time at Netflix. In the space of five years, Flanagan wrote and directed five miniseries for the streaming service. It is no exaggeration to claim that each of Flanagan’s shows for Netflix was not just a critical success, but an influential piece of horror television history in its own right. 2021’s Midnight Mass influenced shows like 2026’s isolated small-town Netflix horror Below, while 2022’s The Midnight Club, with its blend of teen drama and supernatural horror, had a clear impact on Netflix’s later Addams Family spinoff Wednesday. Meanwhile, the writer/director’s first two Netflix shows were ambitious literary adaptations that opened the door for numerous multi-generational horror epics. Admittedly, Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor struggled with some of its class themes as the series turned Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw into a sprawling story told across three decades. However, his first Netflix miniseries, 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House, was a masterpiece that has not been outdone since. With a staggering ensemble cast including Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Victoria Pedretti, The Haunting of Hill House itself peaked with a sixth episode that remains arguably Flanagan’s best work to date. The Haunting of Hill House’s One-Shot Episode Is A Horror Masterpiece Image via MovieStillsDB Loosely based on Shirley Jackson’s iconic novel of the same name, The Haunting of Hill House expands the book’s famously claustrophobic perspective to focus on numerous members of a large, dysfunctional family. In the original novel, the terminally lonely Nell Crain comes to the titular haunted house in search of an adventure, but soon finds she and her fellow participants in a sleep study are suffering some strange psychological experiences. In Flanagan’s series, the Crain family move into Hill House in 1992, and are haunted by both the former inhabitants of their new home and, decades later, by their own grief and regret. After a tragedy befalls the tight-knit family, the two generations of the Crain family splinter apart, with each of the children trying to move past their traumatic time in Hill House through one means or another. For Elizabeth Reaser’s Shirley, this means surrounding herself with the dead in her work as a mortuary owner while, for Siegel’s lone wolf Theo, it means avoiding contact with others for fear of what emotional connection could dredge up. Like Flanagan’s later Netflix show The Fall of the House of Usher, The Haunting of Hill House gives every family member a moment in the spotlight. However, episode 6, “Two Storms,” proves that the earlier show takes a much more empathetic view of its heroes. The Haunting of Hill House’s Incredible Episode 6 Feat Explained Image courtesy of Everett Collection As “Two Storms” begins, The Haunting of Hill House bounces between a storm that knocked out the power in Hill House back in 1992, setting the family’s tragedy in motion, and a storm in the mortuary in the present day, as the family gathers for a funeral. While the episode actually consists of five shots invisibly cut together to look like one, with an astounding 17-minute single take as its centerpiece, the effect is entirely convincing. “Two Storms” seems to never cut away from its action for a moment, which would be impressive even for a straightforward dramatic series focusing on a group of characters having a heated emotional reunion in a single setting. However, what makes this achievement so astounding is that “Two Storms” focuses on two separate casts, in two separate locations, across two distinct time periods, playing the same characters decades apart, all at the same time. The overlapping story of “Two Storms” highlights the ways that the family’s past contrasts with their present, mirroring many of their traumas, until the ending finally sees characters from the 1992 storyline bleed into the present-day setting. It’s an astounding marriage of form and content that literalizes the show’s later line about how, rather than experiencing time as a linear progression, people flit in and out of each other’s lives like confetti. Many of Netflix’s best horror shows, like the South Korean zombie series All of Us Are Dead, can boast almost as many shocking scares as The Haunting Of Hill House. However, what makes Flanagan’s show stand out in small screen horror history is the way that the series seamlessly melds profoundly moving character drama with genuinely terrifying horror, creating a series that feels as much like Six Feet Under or Succession as it does The X-Files or The Terror. The Haunting Of Hill House's One-Shot Episode Might Be The Highest Point Of Mike Flanagan's Career So Far The cutting between the family’s flashbacks and current-day storylines is impressive throughout, but weaving together dreams, hallucinations, the two timelines, and a talky, verbose funeral scene involving the entire main cast makes “Two Storms” truly incredible, and a singular achievement for Flanagan. The director has an undeniably impressive career, with movies like the ambitious The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, Hush, and Gerald’s Game earning as much praise as The Haunting Of Bly Manor or The Midnight Club. However, while Flanagan’s Carrie may change this, the writer/director has not yet managed to create a movie or TV show that has outdone “Two Storms” in terms of its self-contained mastery of craft. Indeed, a lot of Flanagan’s projects have not tried to, as the playful, colorful The Fall of the House of Usher is closer in tone to the horror comedy anthology Creepshow than the heartfelt drama of this 2018 miniseries. Similarly, while The Midnight Club is truly tragic at times, Flanagan himself said that the show’s younger target demographic led to fewer monologues about the nature of life and a punchier film-making style befitting a YA novel adaptation. Thus, some of Flanagan’s more recent efforts deserve credit for branching out and trying something new in terms of tone rather than resting on his laurels. That said, for anyone unfamiliar with the writer/director’s oeuvre, there is only one place to begin. It would be a challenge for any horror fan to come away from Netflix’s The Haunting Of Hill House, and specifically the masterful achievement of “Two Storms,” without viewing Flanagan as an all-time great of the genre. Release Date 2018 - 2018 Network Netflix Showrunner Mike Flanagan Cast Michiel Huisman Steven Crain Elizabeth Reaser Shirley Crain