[TV Review] Midnight Mass (2021)

“There is no time. There is no death. Life is a dream. It’s a wish. Made again and again and again and again. And I’m all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that I am.”

Hymns have never felt so threatening in this third TV series from horror darling Mike Flanagan. Midnight Mass takes us into the world of the deeply religious and close-knit community of Crocket Island where a new priest’s appearance coincides with both miracles and tragedies.

Mike Flanagan’s specific brand of horror is quickly becoming iconic. A humanist story beset with deep-seated personal traumas peppered with jump scares, ghosts, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. His specific alchemy for making entertaining horror out of personnel baggage is emulated by many and mastered by few. Midnight Mass, while lacking the visceral terror of The Haunting of Hill House or the gut-punch emotion of The Haunting of Bly Manor, is a worthy addition to his canon of gospels (pun intended). 

We follow Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) on his anxiety-ridden return to his home of Crocket Island 30 miles off the coast of Washington state after spending several years serving a prison sentence for manslaughter while driving drunk. He’s haunted by the patented, glowy-eyed  sleep demon of the dead teenage girl and in the doghouse with his father (Henry Thomas) who both resents Riley’s escape from the island to the urban sprawl of Chicago and is horrified by what his son has done with his life. 

As Riley tries to reintegrate himself into the community that includes his childhood sweetheart Erin (Kate Siegel), an overly zealous school teacher and church leader Bev (Samantha Sloyan), and a new, practicing Muslim Sheriff Hassan of an all Catholic island (Rahul Kohli), Father Paul (Hamish Linklater) arrives to replace the town’s beloved, aging priest who has fallen ill while on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem ahead of the Easter season.

Father Paul quickly proves charismatic and gifted, as miracles of healing begin to occur on the island and more and more denizens file into the pews of St. Patrick’s to get a taste of the divine. But something more is lurking beyond the altars and sacrament, a dark truth to Father Paul and the unholy root of his apparent powers. 

The climax of this story is one that sounds ridiculous on paper and was likely a tough sell while pitching (Netflix already passed on the show once back in 2014) and clearly came from the wandering mind of a bored Catholic schoolboy dreaming of nightmares between homilies. Its scares are slow to boil and shrouded in a winding mystery (though there was at least one jump scare that managed to get me, if not nearly at the level of Hill House’s now-famous one). It’s an exercise that makes slow horror work well in a series of films conflating arthouse with long-winded atmospheric shots where nothing happens. Flanagan knows how to keep the mind and heart engaged even when the pulse isn’t rushing and it has a lot to do with his wonderfully believable characters.

Catholicism and all its aesthetics and rituals are no strange terrain for horror creators. But in perhaps one of the best meditations on the nature of faith since The Exorcist, Mike Flanagan has delivered a piece that not only includes all the odd and admittedly creepy trappings of Catholic ceremony but leans in with vigor to its motifs and themes that salt an incredibly textured story. 

Playing like an ex-Catholic having a conversation with himself, Midnight Mass takes audiences on a journey into a deeply religious world from every possible angle of approach: the former altar boy turned atheist, the holier-than-thou wannabe nun, the secular believer who comes for the tradition, the fanatic yet ultimately earnest priest, the outsiders without a house of worship of their own. Each facet of religion is explored, at times under a microscope. And even this manages to avoid didacticism or tone-breaking philosophical lectures. 

But, if there is a sin to be found in Flanagan’s piece, it’s in the script itself where many fans by now have noted the excessive use of monologue (criticism Flanagan has humorously accepted) and while the story pays off with its most well-rendered monologue, by the last episode you find yourself preparing to settle in for a 5+ minute scene when a character opens their mouth. I like to think of this as playing into the Catholic themes of the show--confessions and homilies--or perhaps it’s a holdover from the show’s previous incarnation as a book. But who can blame Flanagan for taking the time to air out his soul and, honestly, who can blame many of the characters? Flanagan, rather than falling in line with some nonchalant guy-with-a-cigarette-and-whiskey speaking with cool indifference about the nature of the world, earnestly invites us into his philosophy, his personal hopes, his visceral fears, without the fear of being caught trying. 

Once again Mike Flanagan proves that it’s not the fall season without one of his gut-wrenching, stylized horror-tinged forays into the human soul.

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