The Midnight Club
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
While it might not hit the highs of his "The Haunting of Hill House" or "The Fall of the House of Usher", Mike Flanagan's THE MIDNIGHT CLUB still delivers occasional thrills & chills.
Spread over ten episodes (probably two or three too many from a story telling standpoint) the story structure is clever.
We meet Ilonka (Iman Benson) just as she's about to enter college. After receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, she instead travels to Brightcliffe, a strange and mystery laden hospice for teens.
The collection of young patients in Brightcliffe covers a wide range. This isn't the Breakfast Club, and that's a great thing for us, the viewer. As always, Flanagan casts a stellar bunch of newcomers, as well as reliable members of his acting troupe that appear in many of his superb horror miniseries on Netflix. (If you haven't seen "Midnight Mass" drop everything and go watch it. NOW!)
Ruth Codd (so memorable in "House of Usher") plays Anya, a fiery, in-your-face patient who has zero tolerance for sympathy or false hope. Codd breathes incredible fire into Anya. This was Codd's first acting role and she kills it.
As in the memorable series, "Lost" each character is embellished by flashbacks, but smartly here, they are also informed by the stories they take turns telling to each other, every night at Midnight in the fireplace lit library, hence the title.
The stories are pure fiction, but they reveal a lot about each narrator.
Flanagan is in fine form telling most of these fiction stories as tales within the tale. Some are funny, some are clever and some are packed with scares.
Igby Rigney ( Midnight Mass) is very good as Kevin, Chris Sumpter shines as Spencer and Sauriyan Sapkota delivers as Amesh.
Each week tends to spotlight a character and their tales of fiction and some were far superior to others. When they don't work, things slow down and its the ONLY Flanagan series that I grew a bit tired of in its cushy middle section.
I'm spoiled by his hard driving narrative that kept me glued to my screen for hours in "The Haunting of Bly Manor" and the previously mentioned "Hill House" and "Midnight Mass". Those series were so fast, so compelling, so incredibly involving that you couldn't walk away.
This one took me over two months to finish and I began to question if I would.
It is the only series so far that Flanagan has adapted from a modern, YA series of novels, by Christopher Pike. Haven't read it, don't plan to, but I can only assume that the core story was less inspiring to the writer/director than the brilliant works of Shirley Jackson on "Hill House" and Poe for "Usher".
There are bright spots.
They include Zach Gilford as Mark, one of the med caretakers at Brightcliffe, whose relationship with the patients is special.
Some of the trips down that forgotten elevator to the basement are classic Flanagan, with taut suspense and horrors just out of reach of every flashlight. But nothing here matches the storytelling propulsion of his other series.
The entire subplot with Samantha Sloyan as Shasta, Brightcliff's neighbor, could be dropped without consequence and would only help the flow. Even when that part of the tale reaches its big climax, its thrown away so fast it's of zero consequence to anyone at the manor. Sloyan was fantastic as Bev Keane in "Midnight Mass", it is one of the most compelling performances of the past decade. But she's given little to do here but collect herbs and mushrooms.
Nightmare on Elm Street fans will also like seeing Heather Langenkamp who played young Nancy Thompson, Freddy Krueger's main target in the original 1984 hit. She was a horrifically bad actress in that role. More than 40 years have passed....and some things remain constant....
Overall, the whole thing just goes on way too long before wrapping up with a sweet bow on its final episode.
Even lesser Flanagan is better than plenty of other options, so I'll just drop THE MIDNIGHT CLUB a C and move onto every other brilliant series that Flanagan has created for Netflix, all of which are world class. Skip this one and dive into one of the others now. You won't be disappointed.
MASS first, HILL HOUSE second, USHER third, BLY MANOR fourth. All superb.
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