Midnight Mass

Midnight Mass

2021, TV mini-series

Creator – Mike Flanagan

Stars - Kate Siegel, Zach Gilford, Kristin Lehman

 

 

Flanagan’s characteristic slow build and grasp of character reaps rewards, and is always punctuated by memorable horror set-piece or images: glowing eyes in the bushes (look closely); dead cats washed up on the beach, etc. The impending horror is at first hinted at in throwaway comments and then sealed in uncanny and disturbing incidents like a disappearing pregnancy. And then, when things are settled, a surprise is thrown in and things really get going…

 

It’s a wordy piece, very concerned with existential questions – guilt, responsibility, repentance, existence, mortality, death, etc. Second Chances are a major theme, with the limits of the island manifesting those of the characters. But it’s also very good at the passive-aggressive and manipulative rhetoric of religion: in this case, used to invite and justify the monstrous/vampirism. Dracula seduced his victims with promises of longevity and anti-Victorian liberation, warded off by Christianity’s piety and symbolism; but Flanagan’s piece here suggests that Bible prose isn’t any protection at all and in fact can be used to fit any personal agenda, even tailoring it to vampire lore. When scientific explanation is also thrown in, the story has all bases pleasingly covered. The tale of one man's Faith being endorsed with an encounter with a vampire is the pleasing, playful, subversive stuff of horror, however po-faced the aesthetic (and that's a fine vampire). And there's all the stuff equating religion with a plague.

But this talkiness becomes an issue in the last chapter, when action and character agency gives way to monologues and speechifying. Proceedings still slow for philosophical and existential discussions even though the show has covered this at length in the build-up. In light of what is happening and has gone before, the show seemingly making a last-minute reach for God feels more like a platitude given what the show has proven.

 

It makes sense that the characters plunge into a hymn, but by this moment the show has leaned towards sentimentality and undermines the horror that has been so carefully arranged and earned (this was the same failing with Flanigan’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, only more destructively there). And it’s true that the burning up of vampires is more poetic and romanticed here. Let’s leave aside that I am not wholly unconvinced, given they have a whole island, that there wouldn’t be some way that some of them could have hidden from sunlight, that there wouldn’t at least be protective shade.

 

Nevertheless, the slow build features lots of memorable horror exclamation marks and Hamish Linklater’s performance as Father Paul is a wonderful, riveting and nuanced anchor*. Samantha Sloyan’s turn as Bev Keane is also delicious as the kind of Stephen King God-bothering fanatic you can love love love to hate. As a contemporary ‘Salem’s Lot’ (and to be honest, what could replicate the effect that had on me as a thirteen-year-old?), it holds its head up high. ‘Midnight Mass’ continues Flanagan’s run of mature, character-based horror that knows how to deliver its genre ingredients with both deliberation and full-blooded relish.

 

• For which Hamish Linklater won both Critics Choice Super Awards’ “Best Actor in a Horror Series” and IGN Summer Movie Awards’ “Best Dramatic TV Performance”.