Horror director extraordinaire Michale Flanagan has done a lot for the genre. From convincing your most scared friends to dip their toe into horror with his Netflix mini series, to making truly upsetting films like Oculus and Absentia. When it comes to horror, Flanagan is on top of the world, but wouldn’t it be cool to see him do something… different? Don’t get me wrong, we all love a good family monologue, but wouldn’t it be cool to watch… something else? The following horror novels are delightful, upsetting, and worthy of the horror royal treatment. So let’s bounce our boy away from the classics and see what he could do with these modern tales.

Penpal by Dathan Auerbach

Does Mike Flanagan read r/nosleep? Probably not, but Penpal has transcended that creepy little corner of Reddit and has transformed into a fairly well regarded horror novella. Following the story of an adult man who is looking back on his unusual childhood (and his childhood stalker), Penpal is packed with a specific brand of eerie nostalgia and laced with some truly harrowing imagery. This novella would be perfect for Flanagan’s epistolic Netflix format and would definitely make the average viewer cry. And we know Flanny would love that.

The Fisherman by John Langan

We all know our boy Mikey loves the classics, and while we’d like him to try his hand at remaking something a little more modern (that doesn’t come from the mind of Stephen King), The Fisherman is a modern horror classic in every sense of the word, so he should feel right at home. A tale both epic and personal in scale, the story is honestly about a man who loves to fish, but it’s also about ancient curses, dueling magicians, otherworldly monsters, and the people you love the most coming back from the dead to scare the living shit out of you. Think Doctor Sleep meets Oculus… I mean not really at all, but I think he could draw on the skills he sharpened with those two movies, you know? 

We Had to Remove this Post by Hanna Bervoets

And now we have the opposite of The Fisherman, We Had to Remove this Post is a pointedly modern story. This sharp and spry novella follows the rapidly deteriorating life of a content moderator whose nine to five is filled with all of the violence, bigotry, and sexual abuse the internet can offer. I would love to see Mikey Flan pull in his grander tendencies here and make something that’s really lean, mean and weird, dare I say, Absentia-esque?

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

I think Flanny Ganny would have a ton of fun adapting any Grady Hendrix novel, but I’m dying to see how he would handle the absurdities of Hendrix’s latest work How to Sell a Haunted House. The novel follows an estranged sibling pair as they deal with their parent’s estate (grief! His favorite!) and it features a strong evil puppet plot that I want to see get that Netflix money more than anything. This article isn’t about this director, but James Wan would also crush this. Evil puppets 4 ever.

And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin

This novel is definitely a deviation from Flano’s usual source material, but these pitches are all about pushing our main man out of his monologue comfort zone. And Then I Woke Up is one of the most inventive horror stories I’ve read this year, which is especially delightful considering it’s a part of an oversaturated sub-genre, the zombie plague. Our zombies in this fine tale take a little more of a psychological form, but I won’t say more for fear of spoiling the brutal twists and turns. I’d love to see what Michael could do with this one.

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