Mike Flanagan has hinted that ‘Revival’ will be his darkest Stephen King adaptation yet.
The 42-year-old director is set to helm his third film take on a King story, having previously overseen ‘Gerald’s Game’ and ‘Doctor Sleep’, and has claimed his latest project will be "relentlessly dark and cynical".
Speaking in an appearance on the latest episode of ‘The Kingcast’, Mike said: "What I love about it is it’s a return to cosmic horror, which I think is so fun.
"It is relentlessly dark and cynical and I’m enjoying the hell out of that. I think a lot of King’s work is like this, too, there’s a safety in the sentimental kind of approach to a lot of those stories, and this is just bleak and mean and I like it for that. I haven’t gotten to end a movie that way since ‘Absentia’, maybe? Maybe ‘Ouija’?"
Mike revealed that the iconic horror author "loves" the script he has penned for the project, which focuses on the relationship between an addict musician and a faith healer, and suggested that it will have a darker conclusion than his previous movies.
He said: "One of the ones that I’ve seen come out in the past is like, ‘Oh, well the ending’s sentimental.’ Or, you know, ‘The ending’s syrupy, the ending gets emotional.’
"This one was a really fun piece of material for me because I get to be like, ‘Oh, you want a dark ending? Okay. Cool. Get Ready.’"
Mike recently helmed ‘Doctor Sleep’ – the sequel to the iconic movie ‘The Shining’ – and revealed there was a scene in the movie that even King found too brutal.
Discussing a sequence when Jacob Tremblay’s character Bradley Trevor is murdered by the True Knot vampire gang, Flanagan recalled: "When Tremblay got killed (King) leaned over to me and said, ‘That’s a little brutal, isn’t it?’ We changed it. We backed off.
"When he saw it, we cut to Jacob two additional times so there were two more stabs. We took those out. That was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been on a set. That was horrible for everyone except Jacob, who had a blast."