Mike Flanagan says Oculus started as a rip off of Stephen King’s 1408

Genre filmmaker Mike Flanagan has brought feature film adaptations of the Stephen King novelsGerald’s GameandDoctor Sleepto the screen, and recently wrapped up post-production on a feature adaptation of the King short storyThe Life of Chuck.His production company Intrepid Pictures is currently developing a TV series adaptation of King’s epicThe Dark Towersaga for Amazon’s Prime Video. For a while, he was also set to make a movie based on King’s novelRevival,but that fell apart. But one King story he wanted to bring to the screen and never got the chance to work on was the short story1408,which served as the basis for a 2007 film that was directed by Mikael Håfström from a screenplay by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander, and Larry Karaszewski, and starred John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. Flanagan missed out on1408,but that’s okay because he went on to, as he says, rip it off for his 2013 filmOculus,which he first shot as a short film in 2006.

During a Q&A with Fangoria editor Michael Gingold at Fantasia Fest, Flanagan said (with thanks toIndieWirefor the transcription), “I really wanted to do1408.I couldn’t because who the hell was I, for one thing, and they were making the movie already… But that’sOculusif you replace the hotel room with a mirror, down to the long history of it.1408has this incredible monologue basically about the history of the room. That was terrifying to me. And so the structure ofOculus,the short, is exactly the structure of1408the short story. You’re told the history of the object — or of the room in the case of the story — and then a skeptical protagonist is left alone in there. In mine, it was a true believer protagonist trying to prove the point, but I just ripped off1408.That’s where it came from.“

Directed by Flanagan from a screenplay he wrote with Jeff Howard, the feature version ofOculushas the following synopsis:Haunted by the violent demise of their parents 10 years earlier, adult siblings Kaylie and Tim are now struggling to rebuild their relationship. Kaylie suspects that their antique mirror, known as the Lasser Glass, is behind the tragedy. The seemingly harmless reflections contain a malevolent, supernatural force that infects the mind of anyone who gazes into it. As Kaylie gets closer to the truth, the siblings become caught in the mirror’s evil spell.

The experience of makingOculusturned out to be a great benefit when he was offered the chance to make the TV seriesThe Haunting of Hill House,based on a novel by Shirley Jackson. “The Haunting of Hill Housewas an interesting case because that was brought to me. I believed thatThe Haunting of Hill Househad been perfectly adapted by Robert Wise in 1963. It is a perfect movie. And I said, ‘Well, the novel as it stands, works for about 90 minutes. So if you’re talking about a TV show, you need to do a radical expansion.’ I just didOculus.The Haunting of Hill House(the TV series) isOculus,except instead of two siblings there are five. It’s two timelines braided together, same technique for cutting back and forth between them. It’s all about family trauma and the disagreement about a traumatic event in their childhood while they’re forced to confront that dramatic event in the present. It’s justOculus,but it’sOculusfor 10 hours.“

What do you think of Flanagan “ripping off”1408to come up withOculus,then usingOculusas the inspiration for hisThe Haunting of Hill Houseseries? Share your thoughts on these quotes by leaving a comment below.