‘The Midnight Club’ (Season 1) Review: Streaks of Horror Stories Shows the Meaning of Chosen Family
Mike Flanagan’s sub-genre of horror returns with Netflix’s The Midnight Club. Based on Christopher Pike’s novel of the same name, the series follows a group of terminally ill teenagers at a hospice. Like the titular name, the group sneaks out of their rooms and gets together in the library to share horror stories. Unlike Flanagan’s previous Netflix projects, including miniseries and film adaptations of Stephen King, Henry James and Shirley Jackson novels, this series is very different. While The Haunting of Hill House focused on family, loss and the stages of depression, and The Haunting of Bly Manor explores love, possession, and the meaning of found family, The Midnight Club strays away from these familiar works of Flanagan.
Last year’s Midnight Mass was a huge success. It sifts through the monologues of guilt and death, with themes that explore the difference between religion — spiritual and nihilistic — in a fascinating story. But The Midnight Club dives into the hospice’s history and the secrets of a murderous cult.
After Ilonka (Iman Benson) is diagnosed with thyroid cancer, she convinces herself to forgo all treatment at the hospital and reside in Brightcliffe, a hospice for terminally ill teenagers. She believes the hospice has a healing aura that cures patients’ illnesses. Ilonka is determined to spend her final days in Brightcliffe, even given the choice of how she wants to die. Soon enough, Ilonka is welcomed into a midnight storytelling club, where the eight young teenagers residing in the hospice take turns exchanging horror stories by the library fireplace.
However, Ilonka’s true motive leads her to find a cure for her terminal diagnosis. She tries every method she could find, even drinking water from a magical river. There, she bumps into Shasta (Samantha Sloyan, Midnight Mass), who dresses like a hippie and wanders near the Brightcliffe property. Ilonka takes Shasta’s advice and tries naturopathic remedies to find a cure for her diagnosis. As she digs through Brightcliffe’s hidden history of murderous occult activity, she finds herself closer to finding out the source of a cure. With help from her seven friends at the hospice and Shasta, she gets wrapped in Brightcliffe’s dark secrets and a supernatural web that haunts the teenagers from the past.
The Midnight Club sets the premise as though it makes it a lot easier to exploit terminally ill teenagers. However, Flanagan and Leah Fong don’t reduce the characters to their illnesses. With empathetic writing and great performances by the ensemble cast, part of which is the reason why the series is good shows many personalities on the screen. Each character — and their stories — symbolises a part of who they are and what they have gone through during their illness. For instance, Ilonka’s roommate, Anya (Ruth Codd) shares a part of her personal story with “The Two Danas.” In her story, the devil offers her an option where she is split into two parts, the good and the bad, and Dana would be able to experience both of them together. Eventually, the audience learns that Anya’s story, at least some parts of it, is real. Her broken friendship and the tumultuous end foresaw her leg getting amputated.
Another story that shows that the worlds that the characters have created aren’t too far from their reality is Spence’s (William Chris Sumpter). His family won’t accept his sexuality, which makes it hard for him to come to terms with his illness. As an AIDs patient, it’s hard to find people that don’t make the diagnosis difficult. The story that Spence shares with his friends is a sci-fi story about changing the future. It’s an emotional story, however, the time-bending VHS tape doesn’t linger too long compared to Natsuki (Aya Furukawa).
Natsuki’s story, “Road to Nowhere,” externalises her inner turmoil. This story takes the majority of the episode and brings back one of Flanagan’s favourite collaborators. The story follows Natsuki as she helps two hitchhikers take a ride but she realises that she has been going around in circles. Several times, she sees herself walking down the same road but her body keeps changing — rotting as time passes. Natsuki’s story is an example of Flanagan’s attempt to tell a complicated story on depression and death.
Sandra (Annarah Cymone) is the lone religious member and her stories always end with “angel porn.” Kevin (Igby Rigney) worries that he might hurt people, so he imagines himself as a serial killer driven by a dark force. Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota) has a crush on Natsuki and finds himself sharing a sci-fi story about a shy geek like himself. Cheri (Adia) is a compulsive liar who uses her stories, to tell the truth. Lastly, Anya is a big softie who pretends to be tough and mean but deep down, she cares about her friends; also, Ilonka’s roommate.
The Midnight Club’s winning points are the characters. Their tales are the highlight of the show. By exchanging these stories, the group learns about the characters and what happened to them. As a viewer, we are along for the ride as well. Each character gives themselves the kind of ending that they all deserve. They project their worries and predicaments of the future onto horror stories and use storytelling as a tool to deal with their trauma and pain. Just like any other Flanagan project, monologues are always a huge deal. The monologues are the story. Unlike Midnight Mass, which has an excessive amount of monologues, The Midnight Club feels natural and interesting.
Even when the series has great characters and stories, the overall narrative structure brings everything down. From the very beginning, Ilonka believes that Brightcliffe has a dark history. From ghost stories to murderous cults, what lured Ilonka to the hospice is that she believes a resident was cured due to the healing aura in the premise. These dark mysteries are presented through flashbacks and bloody rituals but as the season ends to a close, they never go anywhere. The supernatural mystery feels underdeveloped. These aspects are abandoned with no explanation, and even the ending feels a little ambiguous.
The Midnight Club prioritises the characters and their emotions more than ending the show with a bang. None of it justifies why the season ended with a cliffhanger and a twist. Even more so, it’s disappointing that the horror elements don’t play out as expected, compared to Flanagan’s other projects. The Midnight Club might be the weakest of it all. However, even looking at it from this perspective overtakes the good aspects of the show which are the performances. Flanagan never misses when it comes to casting his characters. If the narrative structure doesn’t work entirely well with the viewers, the compelling performances by the actors, honestly, save the series from going into complete failure. The heart of it, it’s a heartwarming and relatable drama about a chosen family.
