Midnight Club review: Midnight Mass creator’s scary Fault in Our Stars

In the mid-1990s, American children goosebumps heat. These introductory-level horror novels by RL Stine, never exceeding about 150 pages in length, were notorious for their textual jump-scares, cliffhanger chapter endings. Horrible suggests puncturing only by the mundane of the next page. A formulaic horror promise with enough Honma variation to allow for a sense of discovery every time.

Two years after the first edition was published. goosebumps Book (1992’s welcome to dead house) and Stein’s titles such as Phantom of the Auditorium, Attack of the MutantsWhen Night in the Tower of Terror, Christopher Pike has published his own YA novel. midnight club, This contrasts with Stein’s deliberately cheesy thrills.Pike’s book about the late-night storytelling rituals of a clique of adolescent hospice patients is less incidental, more ruminating about the meaning of life and death, and deeply sad. It paints a vivid and emotionally cold portrait of the stages of unfolding grief. And, importantly, house stylist Mike Flanagan and his Haunting of Bry Manor Co-producer, Leah Fong.It may come as a surprise to fans of the book that despite frequent narrative fidelity, Flanagan and Von’s tone is midnight club Much closer to RL Stine than ostensible sources.

midnight club It centers on Ilonka (Iman Benson), a cancer patient who recently arrived at Brightcliffe, a youth hospice housed in a squeaky seaside mansion. Before long, Ilonka was welcomed into the prestigious pseudo-secret society of the Nocturnal Storytellers, made up of a handful of other patients — Flanagan and Fon joined her three additional club members, including Kevin (Igby Rigney). expand her five-piece ensemble on Pike. She soon falls into a tragic love that makes YA cry.

The group’s custom of gathering in the hospice library at midnight to sit by the fire and share spooky stories is returning to Flanagan’s repertoire after starring nurse practitioner Mark (Zach Gilford) in 2021. implied endorsement by staff including Netflix hits). midnight mass) and Dr. Stanton (nightmare on elm street alumnus Heather Langenkamp). However, Ilonka is not content to accept her own prognosis, and she begins a desperate search for anything that might extend her life. This quest leads her and her friends into the dangerous and potentially supernatural web of Brightcliffe’s past.

as detailed in Recent Vanity Fair Profiles In the show’s production, Flanagan has long wanted to adapt Pike’s novel, and even flirted with trying to film it as his debut feature. With all the indications that Flanagan intended it to be an ongoing story, rather than the miniseries he’d previously offered to streamers), the creators seemingly felt obligated to do so. Add a ton of additional narrative points. So the series is both very faithful to the book and at the same time greatly at odds with it. To comprehensively detail the creators’ additions would require more words than are allotted for this review, midnight club Ghostly visions suggesting haunted Brightcliffe, ominous nightmares that foretell the grisly fate of club members, buried backstories involving mysterious ex-patients, and signature symbols found in various locations. Treated to frequent allusions of another, more secretive society with meaningful object/character body.

Only one of these invented narrative threads leads anywhere in particular during this first season, and the others are mostly teased until the final cliffhanger is revealed. A related story concerns a previous generation of her Brightcliffe patients who, like Ilonka, refused to accept the inevitability of her death. To say too much about this plot line, which consists of rather brazen breadcrumbs, risks ruining the true narrative spine of the show, leading to a series of reveals that are unlikely to shock the savvy viewer. There is. The narrative of Ilonka’s investigation into Brightcliffe’s most prominent former patient takes place well outside the scope of the other characters. An epic hysterical climax suddenly makes the central setting of sick children supporting each other through storytelling quaint.

It’s a dense, heady bouillabaisse, and that’s before we even consider the framework of the series: when the Midnight Club come together to tell their stories, we’re going to see those stories happen to the main ensemble’s star members as well. see it brought to life in an episode within… midnight club The characters are ostensibly an anthology series as they use their imaginations to process their fears and grief.However, rather than adapting the stories created by Pike for the novels, Flanagan and Fong chose to turn the series into a showcase for Christopher Pike, writing additional novels (including 1993’s Thrasher). adapted evil mind and spectrum of the same year road to nowhere) ostensibly the work of these young storytellers.

Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix

Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix

At a meeting, club member Spence (Chris Sumpter) amazing When scared: “Anyone can bang pots and pans in the back of someone’s head. It’s not scary, it’s just amazing, and it’s fucking lazy.” Although clearly intended to be taken as a statement of purpose, Flanagan and Von fail to stick to their own stated values. It’s more reminiscent of haunted house rides than horror.Only one, Kevin’s serial story evil mindIt stretches the teen thrill killer’s surprisingly gruesome tale into several episodes that linger long after the credits roll, but others (especially Spence’s sci-fi thread about time-bending VHS tapes). ) seems designed to evaporate as soon as the episode ends. Removed the spool.In one case, the story — an adaptation of road to nowhere, It features a particularly welcome guest appearance from a longtime Flanagan collaborator — the writers’ strongest effort to overtake much of the episode and externalize the characters’ inner turmoil through storytelling. But that only leads to a maudlin climax, which is quickly wiped away in favor of returning to the pressing task of finding a more mysterious symbol that shouldn’t be there.

There seems to be an essential gap in veracity between Flanagan and Fong’s approaches. midnight clubThe world of the series is lush and immersive, which comes as no surprise to many fans of the prolific Flanagan, but the characters that live in it can’t be submerged in their surroundings. Only pale makeup can make a cake, but they still can’t sell a dire and heartfelt situation. Staff members tell patients that we really, all Dying (what cold solace this offers is not fully acknowledged), one of the emotional peaks of the climax contains the slogan-worthy “Dying is a really crappy reason not to live.” is accompanied by A ruthlessly realistic vision of a young man’s terminal illness may prove too alienating for Netflix YA viewers, but the soft edges constitute a breach of the show’s realism. and offer creature comforts at the expense of honesty.

Not all of Flanagan and Fong’s additions are by any means to the show’s detriment. Like Flanagan’s previous Netflix projects, each member of the ensemble is given ample shading of the character and a much richer lifestyle. It works to its strongest effect in a story with more two gay characters (twice the number featured in Pike’s novel). there is. The invented characters are drawn with charming wit and personality, each of her Ilonka and Kevin’s doomed love affairs fitting comfortably into the margins of his story.Flanagan is undoubtedly a talented craftsman, and so far he seems incapable of making anything completely bad (although some viewers in 2019 Shining sequel doctor sleep I might question that assessment).

This time last year, midnight mass Although proving something of a word-of-mouth sensation for Netflix and tending to be frustrated with the density of the show’s stage monologues, midnight club Proved to be headline worthy —it’s a very confident, tonally coherent piece, telling a tense tale in which attention is drawn evenly across a sprawling ensemble, all of which are shocking yet retrospectively avoidable. It’s perhaps unfair to judge Flanagan’s latest series by the standards of an entirely different story spun for an audience a decade or two older than their ideal. . midnight club viewer. But considering how snug this new project fits, at least on a visual and tonal level, alongside the various hauntings Flanagan has previously conjured on her Netflix. midnight clubA failed attempt at world-building sticks out like a failed track on a familiar band’s new album.

Considering the series may have been designed for an entirely different demographic, a mashup faults in our star And a Nickelodeon mainstay are you afraid of the dark? It could prove a winning formula for its teenage target audience (if not preteens), which is well served by the Flanagan/Netflix partnership’s fully lubricated aesthetic gear. Friday night.In the best-case scenario, this intriguing study of literary dramatization could provide analytical material for budding media analysts. midnight club is a strange object. Exploring how and why Pike’s novels become like Flanagan and Von’s series may prove even more enlightening than Ilonka’s dive into the depths of Brightcliffe’s dark past.

midnight club Currently streaming on Netflix.