The Midnight Club review: Mike Flanagan’s latest is full of bright ideas

In a scene from Netflix’s latest Horror offering The Midnight Club, a young teenager reviews an ongoing narration of a horror story as “something that has devolved into a pile of bullshit jump scares.” Created by Mike Flanagan, Netflix’s favourite horror auteur who has, you could argue, changed the rules of the genre for streaming, The Midnight Club is populated by self-aware teenagers who are cocky enough to identify purpose, even in the face of certain death. There is a lot to like about this latest meditation from Flanagan that moves beyond examining grief to questioning the afterlife. But for all its power, sentimental fury and a near depressive premise, at times this series can also appear to be straddling too many horses for its own good. It’s never not promising though.

The Midnight Club is about a hospice for terminal teenagers. If that doesn’t sound depressing enough, the defiant tone, the bizarre nature of their occupancy in this facility, might add to the punch. What would you do if you were young and dying? It’s a question that the show hauntingly asks from the outset. The manor is referred to as Brightcliffe and it continues Flanagan’s obsession with ancient houses as a site for both horror and aggrieved previous lives. Our protagonist, Ilonka, played by the convincing Iman Benson enters the home as someone who doesn’t just want to spend her last days here like a ‘normal teenager’ but wants to interrogate the place’s history.

One of the better things that Flanagan has brought to the horror genre, is his ability to write around shock and awe, for characters that themselves represent queasy, at times awkward realities. It’s not just a case of the supernatural happening to the ordinary, anymore. Ilonka is introduced to the other kids in the mansion, all on the cusp of death, one way or the other. For a house full of teenagers on the green mile, Brightcliffe can at times appear to be far too cheery or nonchalant. But then, the premise itself is a bizarre, maybe even bemusing to a point. To which effect, the first episode can feel stiff, overcome perhaps by the pressure of selling a plot based on a bonkers, depressing circus-like concoction.

But move past that first half and hour and The Midnight Club finally finds its feet as a teenage drama with a hint of some really bright ideas. Of course, Ilonka and the others see ghosts, aged men and women, cults and corrupted histories, but it’s really the thrill of immersing yourself in the stories being told that powers the rest of this show. Horror, the ghost faces are just a sideshow about what can also at times, feel like and adventure series. Ilonka finds out about a club that most residents meet for, at midnight. These kids tell each other ghost stories (the why of it is an interesting dissection here). The club itself is built around a pact – to get in touch from the other side when one of them passes on. It’s an intriguing if sombre direction to take and at times can become overwhelmingly poignant.

The show’s chief problem is its struggle to balance the arresting midnight rendezvous between a bunch of dying kids and the rest of Brightcliffe’s everyday events that Ilonka and co must traipse through as a matter of routine. There are things to like, ponder and hold onto in both, and often this story within a story format, becomes hard to care for. The noise, the euphoria around the club’s late night meetings represent a younger, more sprightly form of storytelling, brimming with potential for something akin to adventure fiction, but then there is a whole lot about the place, it’s bizarre purpose and history, to uncover, for all of it to justify the faces, the hanging wooden dolls, the spooky noises and the massacred faces. At one point I could feel myself yearning a quirky IT-esquefranchise around teenagers desperate for purpose, but in Flanagan’s hands, you know, the treatment will always be far more distressing than the chalkboard lets on.

The teenage actors do their bits well, considering they have to act in the stories they narrate, look deprived of life and walk around with beating hearts still. It’s a tough brief, but most young actors – especially Ruth Codd – pass with flying colours. Midnight’s Club is not nearly as scary or even grimly poetic as some of Flanagan’s previous work but it does exhibit the creator’s ability to find new notes to hit with familiar instruments. We still get the haunted mansion, with a susceptible back-history, but by focusing on the horrors, more so the anxiety of not knowing what is beyond the end – or if there even is an end – Flanagan again manages to create something intriguing, if not particularly memorable.

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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