The Midnight Club (Full Season Review)

 

Mike Flanagan gained popularity through the infamous Haunting of Hill House miniseries, making him a household name. Despite attempting an original storyline with last year's Midnight Mass miniseries, the Flanaverse (according to Netflix) expands through yet another adaptation, this time through Christopher Pike's The Midnight Club with new and familiar faces portraying characters that can only be fleshed out the way Flanagan can. 

Personally, I have never been a fan of Christoper Pike's work due to his constant focus on high schoolers making horrible choices whilst being extremely horny, something I never really connected with due to my upbringing in Asian culture. The Midnight Club novel was no different. As far as I remembered, the novel was anything but a horror story but rather, a secret anthology of stories told by the members of the titular club while dealing with loss and accepting death in the eyes of an entitled teenager. Christoper Pike may have been accurate to a degree when writing the original source material but the show, in pure Flanagan fashion, expands, explores, and humanizes these dying teenagers realistically which is non-bias.

These 10 episodes may be Flanagan's most accurate adaptation yet, keeping character cues and memorable scenes from the book that are improved onscreen. With that, the show also creates original content whilst also digging deeper into the term 'reading between the lines'. Flanagan also creates new characters to make this ensemble of loveable teens that only have months left to live. In truth, Flanagan improves everything that disconnected me from the book. 

However, this is not Flanagan's best work. It can be seen through the camera work and cinematography that this isn't entirely a Flanagan project. Other directors helm most of the other episodes while having other talents working in the writer's room as well, probably to restrain him from writing 10-minute monologues, a complaint that a lot of people, critics, and audiences alike agreed upon when it came to Midnight Mass. Like the book, the series sticks with the anthology theme with a hint of the signature horror and effective jumpscares. Unfortunately unlike his previous hits, Midnight Club's terror is cheap and indeed targeted to an impressionable, younger audience. 

There's no doubt when it comes to who is headlining his shows, he recognizes raw talent especially when it comes to terrifying these actors. This may be his most diverse cast yet but the real star of this show is Ruth Codd. This is her first major role as the cancer patient, Anya and there's no reason to stay invested than witnessing her stellar performance. Flanagan luckily also saw this talent and manages to include an episode entirely focused on her that happens to be the best episode.  

Due to a different target audience, the ending is convoluted and leads up to a potential storyline if there is another season, which is why it is hard to consider this a part of Flanagan's exceptional filmography.  Something to consider is how compelling The Midnight Club can be even if it does stray away from the main storyline often to learn more about the characters through their short stories for that they were somehow more entertaining and original. It is saddening to say that fans of Flanagan's work might find themselves a tad disappointed once they have binged all 10 episodes, which is a bit more of a chore this time around than his other features. It does have the ability to open a whole new demographic to possible to find his other shows... his better shows.