Midnight Mass -- Religious Horror Done Right
Name: Midnight Mass
Directed By: Mike Flanagan
Subgenre: Creature Feature meets Religiously-Themed Drama
Series: Spooktober 2021 entry #13; review #106
Review: I don't do a lot of series reviews. As binge-worthy as they may be, they take up a considerable amount of time compared to individual films and that's kind of exhausting when you're trying to do a review every day throughout the month. However, Mike Flanagan is horror's new hotness (like Ari Aster, James Wan, Jordan Peele, along with several other modern directors); everyone's been talking about the series, and so I knew I needed to binge it. Special thanks to my good buddy, Katie, for carving out some time to help out in that endeavor! Love ya! So, Midnight Mass is a seven-episode limited series on Netflix, with each episode averaging at about an hour. We follow our main sir, Riley Flynn, as he returns home to his family in their struggling island town. Riley isn't the only new blood in town (of a sort): the town's solitary priest has been replaced by a newer, younger, more charismatic model, and miracles have followed in his wake. Midnight Mass is one part horror and two parts drama: expect large swaths of the episodes to focus on the daily lives of those in town: their struggles, their hopes and dreams, and their relationships with each other. The traditional horror elements unfold slowly, methodically, and they're interwoven with the town in a dreadfully poetic way. Midnight Mass forces you to care about the characters (most of them, at least) before showing you the full range of their human condition--their lives, their deaths, and what happens after that. In fact, the series takes a hefty amount of time to wax philosophical about the nature of death and afterlife in general, a fair consideration given the overarching religious themes of the series.
You see, Midnight Mass presents us with a traditional monster in a very nontraditional way. In fact, we're never actually told what the monster truly is, merely what the town believes it to be--which is an incredibly interesting inversion of the typical lore. The show drags at parts, especially after revealing its monster midway through, but it's the human drama that makes the show as compelling as it is. Of course, the religious elements are quoted wildly out of context, but they create such an intriguing spin on the lore: both the monster's and Christianity's in general. The series culminates in a borderline apocalyptic manner--one that feels like it could be the precursor for the 2003 film of the same name (but significantly worse quality). The plot is taken to its most extreme, though the gore is fairly minimal throughout the series; the ending is more chaotic and unsettling than outright horrifying, at least for the viewers. Unfortunately, as mentioned before, the series does drag in some parts, especially the various character monologues; they're great for characterization and exposition, but they end up feeling a bit forced. And with the monster being unveiled midway through the series, the horror elements shift from "what is that?" to "what are they going to do?" Man is the most savage of monsters, yada yada. For me, though, the most unsettling moments come from seeing the religion (though not necessarily the exact denomination) I grew up in taken to its most terrifying extreme and in such a compelling way that left me wondering: what if they're right? As such, Midnight Mass is a great horror series, but it's a damn near perfect drama about life, love, faith, and how far we might go to preserve them. Definitely worth the binge.
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