Review: The Midnight Club

Mike Flanagan is one of today’s modern masters of horror, right up there with the likes of Ti West, James Wan, Jordan Peele, and Robert Eggers. From his early films like Absentia (2011) and Oculus (2013) to his Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House (2018), Bly Manor (2020), and his magnum opus Midnight Mass (2021), the man just does not miss.

His ability to present the complexities of the human experience in ways that feel so real that it hurts, while at the same time scaring the pants off you, is almost superhuman. The Midnight Club (2022) is no exception to this, in fact it wouldn’t be unfair to say it’s his most emotional work yet, one that hits you right in the heart with such Herculean strength that it bursts.

A recent high school graduate, Ilonka, is diagnosed with thyroid cancer right before she’s set to go to her dream college. Unable to accept her fate, she comes across a hospice for young people called Rotterdam Home where apparently decades ago a girl with the same illness was mysteriously cured.

At Rotterdam she meets Dr. Georgina Stanton who runs the place (played by horror icon Heather Langenkamp), the onsite nurse Mark, and several other terminally ill patients. She soon joins their Midnight Club where they gather in the library at midnight to tell ghost stories, with the twist being that they form a pact that the first to die will try and communicate from the other side.

There is so much to laud about this series that it’s hard to know where to start in singing its praises. It is first and foremost a horror series, so it’s probably best to begin with a question: Is it scary? The answer is a resounding yes.

Flanagan fans (I’m coining the term Fanagans and no one can stop me) are no strangers to his uncanny knack to constantly keep us on edge. If his previous works have shown us anything, it’s that no moment is safe. What may be a wholesome conversation between two friends could turn into a bone chilling scare in the blink of an eye. This is still very much the case here, with the suspense so thick so nerve-wracking you’ll be begging for release.

Along with all that, there’s the jump scares. Jump scares get a bad wrap in horror, as they can be a lazy tool to illicit an easy scare. On the other hand though, in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, they can be a cinematic weapon of mass destruction, which is what they are each and every time in The Midnight Club. Early on in the series, there is a barrage of jump scares, one after another after another, within the span of not even a minute, and not once do they feel cheap. Rather, they overwhelm your senses, shocking you in increasing efficiency.

Before we dive into the more emotional side of things, I’d like to take a minute to talk about the humor. This show is laugh out loud funny, which may seem ironic considering the subject matter, but that irony only serves to make it all the more hilarious.

Most the characters we meet and bond with know their time will soon be up, and while they’re obviously distraught over it, they don’t let it kill their sense of humor. If anything, knowing they’re going to die soon just makes them funnier, as their collective filters have turned off. One character in particular, Anya, is so effortlessly comedic that she’ll have you in stitches on more than a couple occasions.

Now that we’ve talked about the fun stuff, it’s time we talk about the not-so-fun stuff. That’s a compliment by the way, not a criticism. Much like the rest of his projects, especially his Netflix outputs, Flanagan tackles some hefty themes here with equal parts grace and humanity.

Grief, depression, suicide, LGBTQIA+ issues, trauma, and, of course, death are just a handful of the themes the series deals with in its ten-episode run. Flanagan never falters in giving each theme and each character a deep sense of realness. What’s even more impressive however is the way it never feels like it wallows in sadness. Instead, it performs a flawless juggling act of sorts, simultaneously balancing harsh reality with life-affirming sentimentality.

In the same way its scares caught me off guard, its moments of emotion did too. I found myself spontaneously crying without even realizing it until I felt the tears fall down my face. After Hill House, Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass, I knew to prepare myself for an onslaught of emotional blows. Even then, it still managed to break me and put me back together again.

We often see horror as a genre defined by darkness and despair, but that’s only a fraction of what it’s capable of. Heartfelt horror stories that makes you feel something other than fear are just as essential. There’s the joke that in every ghost story grief was the real ghost all along, and even if the show might often fall into that, it doesn’t make it any less powerful or frightening.

While some may find the lack of answers by the series’ end frustrating, if you’re like me and fell in love with this ragtag group of terminally ill misfits, it won’t matter. The Midnight Club doesn’t just put on display everything that makes Mike Flanagan a horror genius, but it gets to the heart of what has made horror such a beloved and endearing genre since its inception.

There is no better way that comes to mind to celebrate this year’s spooky season than by joining The Midnight Club.