Lasser Glass: Haunted Object Makes Cameo in Nearly Every Flanagan Project

Drawing inspiration from Stephen King’s interconnected worlds, such as ‘Derry’ and ‘Castle Rock’, director Mike Flanagan, who is well-known for his love of King, has quietly constructed his own shared universe in his films. Although Flanagan’s “Flana-verse” isn’t as vast, the Lasser Glass, a haunted mirror from his 2013 movie ‘Oculus’, appears in almost all of his works. A key plot point in ‘Oculus’, the mirror also shows up in several of his subsequent works, frequently as a background element for astute spectators.

In ‘Oculus’, two siblings contend with the terrible consequences of a cursed mirror that has plagued their family. The mirror didn’t recur in Flanagan’s subsequent films, ‘Hush’ and ‘Before I Wake’, following ‘Oculus’, but it did so at 1:07:00 in ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ (2016). 

Image Courtesy: Collider

This started a trend in which Flanagan used variations of the Lasser Glass in nearly all of his later movies and television shows. In ‘Gerald’s Game’ (2017), the mirror is a shape rather than a real mirror; it takes the shape of the bed frame. Additionally, it appears in a number of frightening works, including ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ (2018), ‘Doctor Sleep’ (2019), and ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ (2020), at times as a reference or picture and at other times as an actual mirror.

The Lasser Glass appears in the background and as a tattoo in ‘Midnight Mass’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, among other places. According to Flanagan, even though these appearances aren’t included in the story, they help preserve the mirror’s mythos in the event that ‘Oculus’ is ever followed up on. Flanagan intends to keep incorporating the Lasser Glass into upcoming projects in spite of the difficulties pertaining to the ‘Oculus’ rights, making sure it stays a terrifying Easter egg for fans.

–Farheen Ali