Almost The Same Name
Another year, another brand-new Netflix series from Mike Flanagan… But this time, something feels a tiny bit different. Midnight Mass, Flanagan’s most recent endeavor, was nothing short of a masterpiece; it was a deep, multi-layered film that explored issues of mortality through the prism of an elegiac horror tale. It felt like a significant improvement for the writer/work director’s and one that is encouraging for further endeavors.
Despite having titles that are similar to that show, The Midnight Club, which is based on the 1994 book by Christopher Pike and not the Star Trek version, is nothing like it. Club has a youthful humor and energy that is perhaps a bit surprising considering that it is, once again, a series about death, where Mass was solemn and tragic. It’s an odd hybrid of a ghost story, puzzle-box mystery, and horror anthology, mostly taking place in a hospice for terminally ill kids. Although it is driven by an ongoing narrative, each episode (at least so far; I’ve only seen the first four as of this writing) contains an extended story within a story as the residents of Brightcliffe tell ghost stories to one another to pass the lonely nighttime hours.
Diagnosis
The narrative starts in 1994 in Sacramento. Iman Benson’s character, Ilonka, is a seventeen-year-old who is about to embark on the next phase of her life by enrolling at Stanford University in California when she experiences a nosebleed and what appears to be a seizure, which results in a thyroid cancer diagnosis.
Cut to Ilonka turning 18 in a hospital bed with a shaven head nine months later. The realization that she is terminal and may have fewer than two years to live is immediately after the heartbreaking vision. After some urgent internet searching, she learns about Brightcliffe Hospice, a place where patients who are nearing the end of their lives can “transition on their own terms.”
She reads about Julia Jane, a young person who had the same type of cancer and claimed to have been suddenly cured at Brightcliffe, which she finds to be the most intriguing.
A Place To Call Home
Meeting and getting to know the other young residents takes up the most of the episode. There is Kevin, who comes across as nice and amiable. Deeply pious Sandra remains to herself most of the time, while Cheri, a wealthy girl and habitual liar, is not well-liked. Then there is Anya, Ilonka’s abrasive and genuinely irritating roommate. There are a ton of other characters as well—a it’s big, wide cast—but we’ll get to know them better as the series goes on.
Some intriguing seeds have been planted for upcoming interest. Ilonka has obviously done her study on the location and provides us with a useful history of the structure. Ilonka is performed with an endearing blend of warmth and roughness by Benson. It was constructed in 1901, served as a halfway house during the Great Depression, and then was acquired by the The Paragon religious cult before being purchased by Dr. Georgina Stanton (played by the legendary Heather Langenkamp, a.k.a. Nancy from the first A Nightmare On Elm Street) in 1966. To memorialize her late son, Stanton manages the business today.
What Is Really Happening In Brightcliffe?
What is happening in Brightcliffe, then? For starters, there are ghosts. Throughout the episode, Ilonka experiences a number of horrific apparitional visions. The elevator to the morgue in the basement is said to move on its own at night by the other children, and some sort of timeslip phenomenon is allegedly at play. Ilonka has memories of the hospice, and when she first meets Kevin, despite never having met before, the two seem to be familiar with one another.
The sequences that give the series its name are probably its most contentious aspect. The Midnight Club is a drinking establishment where Brightville locals congregate to share eerie tales that are enacted on screen. Immediately after joining the group, Ilonka shares the tale of Julia Jane, the young woman who is said to have been miraculously healed at Brightcliffe. Ilonka gives it a horror twist to fit in, adding flourishes about how Julia was able to foretell people’s deaths, but it’s obvious that her main interest is in the intriguing possibility that perhaps someone actually visited the hospice and survived.
Mike Flanagan’s Muse
Mike Flanagan is a well-known admirer of Doctor Who and has stated that getting the chance to work on it would be “a dream come true.” The 1992 Bally Doctor Who pinball game, which had a little airbrushed Sylvester McCoy, is still a little startling to see featured so prominently at one point. Anya then accuses Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota) of stealing his plot ideas from previous episodes. Including Ilonka’s phrase “That’s all any of us are in the end, stories,” seems to be a reference to a line from the Doctor Who episode “I’ll be a story in your head,” from the Matt Smith era. “I’ll be a story in your head. But that’s OK, we’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one.”