Don’t frighten like Flanagan

The Midnight Club, the latest Netflix series, is a misdirected horror mystery-thriller as the real horror is miserably missing from the 10-episode series

American filmmaker Mike Flanagan has produced some outstanding works in the horror genre, particularly with his Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House. Though Flanagan can be referred to as an expert in the horror genre, however, his latest show, The Midnight Club, a collaboration with co-creator Leah Fong, has turned out to be a misdirected horror mystery-thriller as the real horror is completely missing from the scene.

Premiered on Netflix on October 5, the 10-episode series is adapted from the book by YA horror author, Christopher Pike. Set in 1994 when the book was first appeared, The Midnight Club takes place at a hospice for teens with terminal illnesses. It is certainly chilling and distressing to see how college-bound students face their impending deaths in the series, but even in fiction, it is sometimes difficult to evoke spooky thrills without evoking emotional manipulation from such a realistic tragedy.

A young woman who dismisses her diagnosis arrives at Brightcliffe, a small, cozy hospice with the required enigmatic past, in the opening scene of the story. Ilonka (Iman Benson), a vibrant, audacious, and hopelessly optimistic patient, claims that all she wants is to spend her remaining days with people who can relate to her situation, but she actually came to Brightcliffe after reading about a patient who had the same cancer diagnosis as Ilonka in the past and returned home cured. Her search puts her at odds with the hospice’s concerned but distant founder, Dr. Georgina Stanton (Heather Langenkamp), right away as she is armed with homemade herbal remedies and is determined to learn the source of the alleged healing powers of the hospice.

While exploring, Ilonka discovers another Brightcliffe secret: the Midnight Club. Every night at the specified time, the hospice residents sneak into the unlit library, light a fire in the fireplace, sip stolen wine from mugs despite knowing that the alcohol might conflict with their various medications, and tell spooky tales. Each person pledges that, should they pass away next in the group, their ghost will visit Midnight Club and bring a message from the afterlife. But the teenagers have not yet witnessed any notable paranormal activity, so that’s very disappointing.

Although the young cast gives excellent performances, the majority of these characters are superficial and surface-level. The love interest of Ilonka, Kevin (Igby Rigney), is a docile, all-American guy who is putting on a brave front for his family and a girlfriend with whom he no longer shares any interest. Amish (Sauriyan Sapkota), a cute video game nerd, Natsuki (Aya Furukawa), a depressed artist, and Cheri (Adia), a privileged daughter whose parents tend to send her gifts rather than pay visits, are the other patients spending their last days at the hospice. Sandra (Annarah Cymone) is truly a religious girl, and Spence (Chris Sumpter) is the AIDS-sufferer who has been ostracized by his devout family.

The Midnight Club. (L to R) Igby Rigney as Kevin, Iman Benson as Ilonka in episode 103 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

Ruth Codd, a newcomer, portrays Anya, Ilonka’s boorish roommate with an amputated leg, with an impressively dense portrayal. She reacts to Ilonka’s optimism with a barrage of pessimism. She is devoted to her Brightcliffe classmates though. She, like many other characters, thinks her only real pals are the other residents at the hospice. Additionally, she hints in her tales at Midnight Club about her shattered friendships and unfulfilled dreams, which have contributed to her bitterness. Perhaps only Anya comes out as having any depth to her character and gives an incredible performance.

Stories told at the Midnight Club are based on Pike novels. These range in style from noir to slasher. They are cast with actors from the show’s main cast in a way that seems to reflect the teller’s unspoken views toward the actor’s lead role. For much of the scares and character development in each episode, Flanagan and Fong rely heavily on these vignettes. This makes sense because nobody wants to witness children near death being even mildly tortured. This means that the bloody, gruesome, and most cynical violence, which qualifies The Midnight Club as horror, has to occur outside the central storyline. However, it only disrupts the show.

It is a shame that after a sluggish start, the storyline frequently teases at the more integrated, thematically rich series, but never delivers. As much as various scenes constantly hint at depth, the story lacks it. The contradictory views on death, immortality, and the afterlife are on full display in Brightcliffe. It begs the impossible dilemma of how to spend the months leading up to an unexpected demise.

Flanagan excels at introducing emotional depth to horror settings, and the theme could have been a great fit if he had not been sidetracked by clichéd story elements and excessively sensitive to his ill characters’ darker aspects. In fact, these issues accentuate the flaws in Flanagan’s works, which range from inconsistent pace to slow-moving, and are more often overlooked. There is no denying that The Midnight Club failed to live up to our expectations.