This is the latest miniseries from Mike Flanagan, who you might remember was the man behind Netflix's "The Haunting of Hill House," and various recent Stephen King adaptations. I was under the impression that "Midnight Mass" was an original feature, but instead it's a seven hour miniseries that presents a slow burn horror story. It's a rewarding watch, but requires so much patience that I don't think it's going to land very well with the usual horror audiences.
Two men arrive on the remote fishing community of Crockett Island - Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford), a recently released convict returning home, and Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater), filling in for the ailing Catholic Monsignor during Lent. As the two men settle in, various supernatural events take place, and it becomes clear that they are connected to the church. We meet other members of the community, including the Muslim sheriff, Hassan (Rahul Kohli), Riley's pregnant childhood friend Erin (Kate Siegel), Dr. Sarah Gunning (Annabeth Gish) and her dementia-stricken mother Mildred (Alex Essoe), town drunk Joe Collie (Robert Longstreet), and the self-righteous church lady, Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan).
For the first chunk of "Midnight Mass," I was with the show. I was perfectly happy to watch the slow escalation of the supernatural material, and get to know everybody on Crockett Island. It's a small, insular community where many people have been touched by tragedy. Riley struggles to get over his guilt and substance abuse issues. Father Paul is carrying a secret that is deeply tied to his faith. "Midnight Mass" takes the time to really examine Father Paul's struggles to bring the community together, and is meticulously detailed in its portrayal of all the ins and outs of Catholic liturgy. The characters have the opportunity to talk at length about religion and belief in a way that you don't see very often these days. And it's great, up until the point where it clashes with the show's other aims.
Because once the gore and the horror kick in, Flanagan can't quite seem to commit to the heightened, Grand Guignol level of carnage that he invokes. Bev Keane is set up for the entire show to become a really despicable, power-mad villain, but she never gets to go as big or as ostentatious as she easily could have. Father Paul's final fate struck me as anticlimactic, and not in a good way. The finale is weirdly stop-and-go, with an especially egregious pause toward the end so that one of the heroines can have a long monologue about the nature of death. And you might remember that Mike Flanagan has a bad habit of having his characters ramble on about existential matters to the point of absurdity. It's fitting for a ghost story, but weirdly out of place in "Midnight Mass," which has jump scares and mass deaths and a familiar creature that nobody ever gives a name to - but we all know what it is.
I enjoyed a lot of this miniseries, but I desperately want to edit it down to something more manageable. You could easily lose ten minutes out of every single episode, and condense whole chunks of the storyline. There were so many events that felt like they were playing out at a glacial pace. I like the way the show pulls off some of its big twists, but it's all so drawn out and lugubrious that it's not much fun. To Flanagan's credit the characters are better fleshed out than most, and tragedy that some of them meet hits harder than expected. The actors are very good, especially Hamish Linklater in one of the most showy roles he's ever had. Flanagan does stick the landing, though it takes a while to get there. However, I worry that he's becoming afflicted with the same tendency toward indulgent bloat that afflicts Stephen King.
After this and the recent "Haunting of Bly Manor," I am convinced that Mike Flanagan is one of the most talented people working in the horror genre today. However, giving him carte blanche with a passion project like this has led to very mixed results.
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