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If you’ve caught the first two seasons of crime drama The Devil’s Hour and thought it sounded vaguely, frighteningly familiar, you’re not alone. There is a distinctly Mike Flanagan feel to the music in the Amazon Prime series, which was intentional on the part of the producers. In fact, the ambiance of Flanagan's work was baked into the project from the very beginning.

During The Devil's Hour panel at London MCM EGX in October 2024, Executive Producer of The Devil’s Hour, Sue Vertue, was talking about how important the soundtrack was in building the tension in the show. They knew they wanted to emulate the sound design of Mike Flanagan's work. “When we were looking first of all at, kind of, the composers we would like, the music we wanted, quite a lot of the demo stuff was from Mike Flanagan's shows. You know, The Haunting of Hill House, the Newton Brothers. And we went, why don’t we just ask the Newton Brothers? So they’ve done all the music – all three series.”

If you’re going to emulate someone on the horror side of things, Mike Flanagan is a good one. We’re a pretty big fan of him here and he’s quickly become one of the best-regarded horror directors working today, so there is nothing wrong with trying to emulate how he uses sound and music to unnerve viewers and build the tension.

The first two seasons of The Devil’s Hour are currently streaming on Prime Video, with season three hopefully due out in 2025, according to Vertue.

Catch up with all out MCM/EGX 2024 coverage here.