Opinion| The Midnight Club: Through the eyes of empathy

When Ilonka (Iman Benson) learns that she has cancer, she does some research and finds a hospice far from her home in the hope of unearthing a cure. She just turned eighteen and doesn’t see the point in dying. She has a long life ahead of her – at least that’s what she believes in. And why shouldn’t she? She doesn’t want to give up the fight as long as the flame inside her keeps burning.

But the hospice isn’t a magical building where she’ll be given all the necessary medicines and sent back to college, or wherever she desires, to fulfill her dreams. It’s not as easy as it sounds, and the creators of The Midnight Club, Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong, don’t take any shortcuts to make her journey easy-peasy, either. However, they gently pull the carpet from under her feet so that her fall doesn’t hurt her too much.

In recent years, Flanagan has made one point pretty clear. He’s not merely interested in terrifying the viewers. Of course, there are going to be jump scares and ghosts lurking in the bends of streets. But that’s just the fresh cream he adds on top of the other layers he builds. Empathy, mainly, is the bedrock of his stories. His works are regularly adapted from literary texts; and, yet, you can find his fingerprints all over his horror thrillers.

Ilonka thinks that the only way to beat the disease is to discover the actual recipe that once helped another terminally ill patient a few decades ago. The special patient that she’s obsessed with was also admitted to the same hospice. If she follows in her footsteps, she may have a chance at kicking cancer away. And when death finally inches toward her roommate, Anya (Ruth Codd), Ilonka gathers her friends from the hospice to perform a ritual that she imagines will put an end to Anya’s suffering.

The hospice that they are in, called Brightcliffe, is for teenagers only. Imagine a bunch of young folks whose aim is to see another sunrise; they will obviously do anything to survive, to crawl back into the arms of their loved ones. If the ritual works like magic, Anya will live to tell the tale. And, if it doesn’t, it’ll still be a story to remember, albeit for the rest of the gang. Nevertheless, death is not a funny business. In the third episode of The Midnight Club, a guy quotes Jim Morrison: “People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. At the point of death, pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.”

But don’t you think a real friend is the one who comes to our rescue? Yes, death is a friend when it’s the last stop – not when you’re thrown out of the car in the middle of your road trip. And so, Ilonka hands over the reins to God and expects the higher power to deliver justice. But the ritual, for lack of a better word, is superstition. Ilonka was ultimately wrong, and Anya slowly slips into the vacuum of afterlife. Now, this is the place where compassion raises its smooth hand.

Ilonka’s friends do not blame her for coaxing them into sitting in a circle in ridiculous robes and making them consider that there might be light at the end of the tunnel, after all. Similarly, in another episode, another patient named Spencer (Chris Sumpter) walks up to his mother to tell her that he’ll be surrounded by people who love him for who he is, without any judgments, when the time comes (for him to die), and goes on to express his affection for her despite not receiving any in return because of his sexuality.

Ilonka isn’t likeable throughout the series. And, to be honest, she doesn’t save the day. But she’s never ridiculed for her thoughts. And even Anya, who comes across as aggressive sometimes, is showered with kindness. These teens may take foolish decisions every now and again, and trade stories about flawed serial killers and robots. But look at the community they belong to – it’s always a beautiful feeling to have mutual appreciation.

The ghosts in gaudy makeup in the series, or the other works that Flanagan and his collaborators are associated with, aren’t as shocking as the ones you’ll find in James Wan’s offerings. In fact, if you cut out the frightening elements from The Midnight Club, Midnight Mass (2021), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), and The Haunting of Hill House (2018), they’ll still have the energy to stand on their own feet, as the multi-episode model allows the writers to attach more flesh to their characters and then leisurely arrive at the block where things fall into place.

It’s a problem, however, if the characters are dull or unidimensional. But Flanagan doesn’t go there; he’s happy to decorate the psychological chambers of death and repentance. He doesn’t have to grab the throats of his viewers from behind to make them see what they are afraid to see at midnight.

The Midnight Club is currently streaming on Netflix.

Karthik Keramalu is a writer. His works have been published in The Bombay Review, The Quint, Deccan Herald and Film Companion, among others. 

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