The Midnight Club Series Review: An effective horror tale with a nuanced take on death and acceptance

It’s safe to say that Mike Flanagan is one of the most renowned horror auteurs that Netflix has seen. And just in time for Halloween, the filmmaker is back with yet another conversation with the concept of horror. His route of evoking a sense of trepidation over how horror is not merely a genre but an intrinsic emotion in people gave us the scary but profound his Haunting of the Hill House and Haunting of the Bly Manor. If his last outing, Midnight Mass, called out the pernicious influence of super-organised religionism on its faithful followers, The Midnight Club speaks about death, the horror of understanding mortality and coping with a terminal illness, while defying the hauntings of their minds to escape the wrath of their doomed fates.

An adaptation of the 1994 novel of the same name by Christopher Pike, The Midnight Club is set in 1994. It introduces us to teenager Ilonka (Iman Benson) whose life takes a 360-degree spin after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Post her nine-month failed stint at the hospital, Ilonka, after much online research, finds Julia Jayne, the one inmate who walked out cancer-free after getting admitted to the Brightcliffe hospice for terminal teenagers. With a hope for a miraculous cure, Ilonka too joins the hospice run by the mysterious Georgina Stanton and meets a bunch of youngsters (Kevin, Anya, Spence, Sandra, Natsuki, Amesh, Cheri). The teens run a storytelling club called the Midnight Club where they share horror tales with one another during the dark hours, which sets the ball rolling for the rest of the nine episodes.

Creators: Mike Flanagan, Leah Fong

Cast: Iman Benson, Igby Rigney, William Chris Sumpter, Ruth Codd

Streamer: Netflix

The show is a brilliant confluence of human emotions that deal with death, acceptance, and mortality, while also doubling up efficiently as a horror anthology. Each of the teen’s stories brims with horror, but they aren’t just regular set pieces. The stories talk about the fears entrenched deep within their minds. Flanagan makes these narrations deeply impactful by weaving in each of the inmate’s darkest troubles by manifesting them as the paranormal existence trapped within their satanic human minds. If in Road to Nowhere, Natsuki (Aya Furukawa), who also has clinical depression, narrates her tale of a suicidal journey, Anya’s The Two Danas is about the human mind torn between desire and expectations. If Kevin’s The Wicked Heart, which is about demonic inner voices, takes you to fiendish spaces and teaches isolation is not a cure, Sandra’s Gimme a Kiss is about mending ailment to the LGBTQ community.

With his usual flair, Flanagan plays all these narratives well by having the characters add layers to the intriguing storytelling. In fact, Flanagan also has fun in the first episode where he employs 21 jump scares back-to-back, breaking the Guinness World Record for most scares in one episode. Considering the filmmaker’s popular detest for jump scares, it could be his commentary on lazy writing in this genre? Or as Spence says, “Startled isn’t the same as scared... And it’s lazy as f**k”. Nevertheless, the show incites much more fear than its jump scares do, thus safely cementing Flanagan’s style of storytelling. The filmmaker also draws a calming and settling comparison to death as a lurking shadow. It works well, especially when the story is set in a devilish hospice and the show is not just reliant on the sudden appearances of ghosts. However, in the show’s signature style, there is apt reasoning given for these shadows in the dark.

The Midnight Club’s entire cast puts up a fabulous show, with brownie points to Ruth Codd who plays the cynical, wheel-chair bound Anya, who has seen far more deaths than any of the other inmates. In her acting debut, Codd cracks the code in establishing the different transitions for Anya, whose life is riddled with unrecoverable losses. Benson too delivers a memorable performance as Ilonka.

That said, The Midnight Club also has a fair share of plots dedicated to the occult practice. In fact, it does play a major part but leaves a few threads untied at the end, making you question the intentions and whereabouts of a few characters. The Midnight Club definitely has a few loose endings in several of its arcs. But that shouldn’t scare you away from this bone-chilling series. Especially the last two minutes, where it unpacks a few revelations of one certain character. As it draws open to a multitude of interpretations and several possibilities, perhaps it’s a tease for a second season?