Released in October 2022, The Midnight Club is the newest masterpiece created by Mike Flanagan, director, producer, filmmaker, and central figure of modern horror. In the series, we meet Ilonka (Iman Benson), a young adult who discovers terminal cancer on her way to college. When she goes to the clinic for terminally ill teenagers, members of a secret club make a sinister pact: whoever dies first will have to send a sign from beyond.
“The Midnight Club” is Flanagan’s return to Netflix after “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor” – and, in every case, it’s a delightful series full of scares, beautiful photography, and a lot of emotion.
The genius mind of Mike Flanagan
Mike Flanagan is an American filmmaker best known for his horror films, all of which he directed, wrote, and edited. Absentia (2011), Oculus (2014), Hush, Before I Wake, Ouija: Origin of Evil (all in 2016), Gerald’s Game (2017), and Doctor Sleep (2019) stand out. Flanagan also created, directed, produced, wrote, and edited the Netflix supernatural horror series The Haunting of Hill House (2018), based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name. He also helmed the standalone second season, The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), and most recently, The Midnight Club (2022).
Flanagan’s work has drawn critical praise for its direction, and focus on rarely portrayed characters and themes. Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, and William Friedkin, among others, have praised it. Flanagan is considered to be one of the most competent directors in the contemporary horror scene, as he was called “one of the most popular horror brands in streaming”. Flanagan has in his creative DNA an enviable ability to reference without reproducing, filling our hearts with joy when we see the actor from one of his series playing another character in another – something he does often. Flanagan’s mind is a compendium of songs, films, and paintings, that work like tattoos in his formation, being there because they inspired and becoming inspiring powers.
The twins’ “Hill House” & “Bly Manor”
“The Haunting of Hill House” was released by the streaming platform on October 12, 2018. The plot of the series accompanies Shirley, Theo, Nell, Luke, and Steven, the five brothers who grew up in Hill House, the most famous haunted house in the United States. Now adults, they return to their old home and are forced to confront the ghosts of the past after their younger sister’s suicide.
Throughout the episodes, the series shows us past and present situations involving these characters, gradually introducing us to the situations that forever transformed their lives. The series has a 93% approval rating from the specialized media on the Rotten Tomatoes website, while the public rating is 91%. In turn, on IMDB its score is 8.6 out of 10 with 237,000 reviews having been carried out. An interesting point still to be remembered is the fact that after the success of Hill House, filmmaker Mike Flanagan and Netflix announced that The Curse was becoming an anthology series with a new product being announced under the title of The Haunting of Bly Manor.
At “Bly Manor”, the young Dani Clayton is hired by Henry Wingrave to work in a huge old mansion, taking care of his two orphaned nephews. But everything gets complicated when brothers Flora and Miles begin to behave strangely. Even though it has much less to tell and develop, Bly Mansion also has new techniques. If Hill House manifested memory and connection through its halls and ghosts, here everything revolves around trauma and how it affects perception, whether of time, relationships, or ourselves.
The manor does not represent an imminent danger to its inhabitants, but it serves as a stage for each of the characters to face unresolved pains, which have shaped their entire lives. The horror here is much more subtle, interior, and poetic than before. Everything about the plot is treated like a tragedy, which is very effective on the viewer because of the great character development. There are still jumpscares and hauntings that play with the viewer’s attention, but leave them as secondary while focusing on the oppressive atmosphere of a place filled with heartache.
In both series, philosophical horror blends seamlessly with unexpected scares, impressive plot twists, and many, many tears. With sensitivity, charisma, and fear, Hill House and Bly Manor snuggle into the viewer’s bowels in an initially subtle way, but which gains space with each new minute of the episode, leaving only nostalgia and pain when the series ends. Flanagan creates plots designed to bring reflection to the viewer’s mind, forcing us to face issues such as trauma, illness, heartbreak, separation, family disputes, rape, suicide, and death face to face – only that, amazingly, in an extremely light and comfortable. Such an experience is repeated in The Midnight Club.
The Midnight Club: after two years, the expected comeback arrives
Ilonka, an 18-year-old girl who was about to go to college, discovers terminal thyroid cancer. Thus, she goes to Brightcliffe – a palliative care unit – and there she meets a group of young people who participate in the Midnight Club, a meeting that always takes place after curfew. At the club, the young people make a pact: whoever dies first will send a sign from beyond to the others. But as soon as the first patient dies, strange things start to happen. Not believing that the events are really something supernatural, the group tries to find an explanation for what happened, but as more frightening facts happen, they try to contact their dead friend to unravel the mystery.
With just one day after it was released, “The Midnight Club” entered the Guinness Book, the book of records, as the production to have “the most scares scripted in a single episode of television”, being 21 in total. However, it is not the scares that Midnight Club is centered on: the series takes us into the daily lives of 8 teenagers who are about to die and have to learn to deal with this reality.
Once again, Flanagan returns with a work that is sensitive, subtle and full of intense reflections brought to life so beautifully that even the weakest of stomachs will be hooked on the series. The spectacular performance of the cast makes us feel closeness, friendship and extreme compassion for those young people who are seeing life slipping through their fingers like sand – in addition to that, again, Mike brings LGBT+ characters extremely well constructed and placed in the scene. Prepare to be on the edge of the couch biting your nails as the Midnight Club members share spectacular ghost stories, which take up at least half of each episode and bring actors from the other two works back to the screen.
“The Haunting of Hill House”, “The Haunting of Bly Manor” and “The Midnight Club” are available on Netflix – and surely deserve your play. Enjoy!