Stephen King’s Carrie is back as an eight-part series on Prime Video and honestly what better time of the year than spooky season. The reviews have been strong, but what caught my attention was where it was filmed. Yep, Vancouver.
I knew Mike Flanagan had filmed several projects here, but going through his credits I realized something I hadn’t fully appreciated, he’s made five consecutive television series in Vancouver.
I thought that was pretty cool. Flanagan is one of the key people making horror right now, responsible for Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House and The Fall of the House of Usher. And after spending years filming here, he liked Vancouver enough to make it his home.
Stephen King himself seems to agree. The legendary author called Flanagan “the best adapter of my work” in a video posted online promoting Carrie. That’s quite the compliment considering the number of filmmakers who have adapted King’s work over the past five decades.
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Five series, all made here
Flanagan’s career started with smaller horror films. His 2011 feature Absentia was funded through Kickstarter, followed by Oculus in 2014 and Hush in 2016. By 2017, he was adapting Stephen King with Gerald’s Game, and two years later he directed Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining.
His TV breakthrough came with Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House in 2018. Filmed largely in Georgia, the series established him as one of horror’s most recognizable filmmakers before his next project, The Haunting of Bly Manor, brought him to Vancouver.
He was already scouting his next project while Bly Manor was filming. In 2021, Midnight Mass arrived on Netflix, featuring an isolated fishing community called Crockett Island. If you’ve seen it, you’d be forgiven for assuming they found some remote coastal village and shot there. Turns out they couldn’t find one. They built it instead.
In a personal essay for Bloody Disgusting, Flanagan explained that the islands around Vancouver were either too developed or too difficult to reach with an entire film crew. Production designer Steve Arnold’s team constructed waterfront houses at Garry Point Park in Richmond, with more of the town built on farmland in Langley. Bridge Studios in Burnaby housed the interiors.
Flanagan recalled that Richmond locals were curious, and sometimes a little annoyed, about a collection of houses suddenly appearing in their waterfront park. Fair enough. All of that work was nearly derailed when COVID shut down production days before cameras were supposed to roll. Flanagan returned to Los Angeles while the newly built community sat empty. Months later, the crew came back and finished the series under pandemic protocols.
It’s funny to think that thousands of people have probably walked through Garry Point Park without knowing one of Netflix’s creepiest fictional towns once stood there. In Hollywood North, that sort of thing happens often.
Then in 20022 The Midnight Club was released, using Pitt Meadows to help create the mysterious Brightcliffe Hospice. Then The Fall of the House of Usher in 2023 turned Metro Vancouver locations, including a Ladner mansion, into the world of Edgar Allan Poe’s wealthy, dysfunctional family.
The fifth is Carrie, filmed in 2025 in Vancouver and Surrey. Parts of Cloverdale became the fictional town of Chamberlain, Maine, while Eric Hamber Secondary School was among the other locations used.
And the scale of Carrie goes well beyond dressing up a few storefronts. The famous prom scene took roughly two weeks to shoot, with hundreds of extras, stunt performers, fire effects and an elaborate set built to be destroyed. According to People, star Summer H. Howell spent about 12 days covered in fake blood. I can’t imagine how much cleanup that involved.
Four Netflix series and one for Prime Video. All shot in Vancouver.
Hollywood North and the Flanaverse
Vancouver’s crews can convincingly turn a public park into an island community, a school into an American high school and a mansion into the home of a fictional pharmaceutical dynasty. We’ve had almost fifty years of practice at being Hollywood North, but Flanagan’s work is a particularly good showcase of what local production teams do.
Flanagan also likes working with familiar faces. Samantha Sloyan, Kate Siegel and Rahul Kohli have appeared in several of his productions, often playing wildly different characters. Netflix even has a name for this recurring group of actors: the Flanaverse. It’s pretty cool how many of those productions have been made right here.
The five productions are impressive on their own. What surprised me more was hearing he’d actually decided to live here.
His daughter thought Canada was home
In a 2022 interview with TheWrap, Flanagan recalled returning to Los Angeles after The Fall of the House of Usher. His family had spent so long in Vancouver that his daughter had no memory of living in L.A. She thought Canada was home.
In September 2026, he said on Tumblr that he now lives in Vancouver. He was answering a fan who asked about future visits to the Rio Theatre.
There’s a fun local detail here. After finishing Carrie, Flanagan and some of the cast watched Brian De Palma’s original 1976 film together at the Rio. Howell hadn’t seen it before making the series. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Flanagan recalled sitting beside her as she realized how different their adaptation was. That’s a pretty great night at a neighbourhood theatre. The Rio even added a second public screening hosted by Flanagan after the first sold out.
The Park Theatre’s Hollywood investors
When Cineplex stopped operating the Park Theatre in 2025, it looked as though Vancouver might lose another independent cinema. The Rio Theatre team, led by Corinne Lea, stepped in, and local producer Chris Ferguson of Oddfellows Pictures helped assemble an Avengers-like group of investors.
The lineup is ridiculous: Flanagan; Longlegs director Osgood Perkins; Anora filmmakers Sean Baker and Samantha Quan; Final Destination: Bloodlines director Zach Lipovsky; and Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard, among others.
Ferguson is also a partner with Perkins in Phobos Pictures, the Vancouver company associated with Longlegs and The Monkey. Flanagan’s involvement in the Park doesn’t mean he’s making films with Oddfellows or Phobos; no such collaboration has been announced. But it’s interesting that so many recognizable filmmakers are connected to the same Vancouver theatre. And one day I would love to see a Flanagan/Phobos film.
With the number of local cinemas we’ve lost, I’m glad people with that kind of industry influence were willing to help keep the Park alive for generations to come.
Another film on the way
Flanagan’s company, Red Room Pictures, is producing Rot, a psychological body-horror feature scheduled to shoot in Vancouver this November. Alexandra Magistro, a longtime collaborator, is making her feature-directing debut. The cast includes Cooper Koch, Amber Midthunder and Matthew Lillard; the latter two are also in Carrie. Flanagan is producing, not directing.
He also has a new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist in development. No filming location has been announced, but given his track record here, I hope Vancouver gets a look.
I don’t know if Flanagan will shoot his next five series here. But he’s already made an enormous amount of television in the region, he’s chosen to live here and he helped save The Park Theatre.
For someone who’s one of the key names in horror right now, that’s super cool. I’d love to see more filmmakers follow his lead, film, produce and lay down roots in Vancouver. And I think Vancouver should make a little more noise about the ones who already have.
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