January Meme: Midnight Mass

[selenak]

itsnotmymind asked.

Re: the Flanaganverse, I’d liked Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House (except for the ending), and been mildly interested but in the end not really touched by his take on The Turn of the Screw, aka The Haunting of Bly Manor. More recently, I loved what he did with Edgar Allen Poe in Fall of the Houes of Usher. As opposed to all of these, Midnight Mass isn’t inspired by literary origins, though some characters do feel as if they could be from a Stephen King novel. (Bev in particular, though in a different way Riley, too.) (Given that he adapted some Stephen King, too, that's probably not surprising.) Anyway, I was captured from the get go and thought the story had the right (for it) ending. All the characters of its ensemble come alive, and the self indulgent parts - my lord, does Mike Flanagan love his monologues! - don’t detract, they somehow fit with the people who say them.

(Not solely the priest who has a professional excuse to monologue.)

What’s most appealing, though, is that Flanagan uses his basic premise - using the similarities between the vampire myth and the Catholic mass if you take it literally - for more than a gimmick, and while the series certainly offers its share of meta and Watsonian critique on religion, it doesn’t do so via cheap shots, but shows the good side of faith as well. You have characters who exploit it, and you have characters who draw their strength from it. The small community on an island where the story is set feels real. (With the one caveat that clearly this entire series takes place in a universe where no vampire novel was ever written, or if written then never filmed, and vampires don’t exist in pop culture.) The way relationships between the characters are complicated and often intense provided emotional hooks for me to follow the story. Morevoer, I admired that Flanagan had the guts to put his big horror/action climax two episodes before the ending, and devoted the last two episodes to the fallout. The emotional consequences for everyone is something the series really explores. It’s the kind of thing often missing when something as momentous as what happenes in said episode does. Especially in horror. (And if a movie or show does take the time, you have the inevitable "too many ending/endings too drawn out" complaint. Mind you, exploring the consequences is something Flanagan seems to be interested in, full stop. Only in the two Haunting series and in Usher, he does so via essentially telling the story in two different timelines, the past and the present. Midnight Mass does two episodes with significant flashbacks - the one where we find out the truth about Father Paul, and the one where Riley tells all to Erin -, not to mention the way Riley is haunted by the image of the victim of his drunk driving, but stilll, the absolute majority of the episode takes place in a very short while (Riley returns to the Island a few weeks before Easter, and most of the action takes place betwen Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday) and on the same location (Aristoteles would be proud). Which means Flanagan has to explore the fallout in the present, and he does. There is also the very humane conviction at play through the story that as a human being, you do not lose your capacity to regret and to act on it, even if you have done terrible things. Doesn’t mean everyone use it it (as opposed to clinging to self justification or denial). But in this series, a surprising number of characters do.



In retrospect, though: Bev being the worst inhabitant of the island - power mad, bigotted, without a relationship that humanizes her, shown as a hypocrite as she herself is unable to accept death and trying in vain to hide herself after having lead a slaughter - leaves Monsignore Pruitt/Father Paul somewhat of the hook, doesn't it? He gets his moment of redemption by turning against Bev when he sees the horrific violence and gets a relatively peaceful death with Mildred by the narrative, so he doesn't have to live with the knowledge he brought this horror upon his parishioners, either. (And for as he confesses a selfish reason, to have a second chance with Mildred.) It's classic antagonist redemption, by presenting someone worse, but still, the way Pruitt is tragic while Bev is just awful on every level does feel a bit manipulative. (I'm not saying it doesn't work on me. I like Pruitt, too. But I notice.)

Also: ever since bimo pointed out to me that the actor playing Riley Finn (oh Whedonesque name!) is the same guy who plays young Roderick Usher, I'm baffled about him being so good as Riley and so bland as young Roderick.


The other days

Comments

[rose_griffes]

Midnight Mass was definitely a top five show of 2021 for me. I watched it twice. Loved the themes, enjoyed the talkiness of it AND the slow-building tension, and the minimal nature of its soundtrack worked great for me. (Hah, themes, winding tension and understated soundtracks are a big part of why I like Andor as well.)

Oh, and both shows had a fairly climactic moment two episodes before the actual season finale.

Anyway! Given how much I liked Midnight Mass, I'm probably going to try House of Usher when I jump back to Netflix. And maybe one of the Haunting adaptations. But I'm still not a horror fan, just a religious themes and/or ethical issues + talkiness + tension fan.

[selenak]

You get all of these themes in all these adaptations. Haunting of Hill House has more sympathetic characters than Usher, but all have interesting characters (not the same thing), and Usher, like Andor, feels at least partly inspired by current events in the way it addresses certain social questions.

[snowynight]

It's very interesting!

[viggorlijah]

Paul though is heavily implied to have been in the early stages of dementia when he got lost and met the vampire - he did not understand what he was doing at the start unlike Bev.

Absolutely one of my favourite series, the ending left me gutted. Religious beliefs are hard to sincerely convey with sincerity and this had all these moments of different faiths and responses to trauma was gorgeous.

[selenak]

Paul though is heavily implied to have been in the early stages of dementia when he got lost and met the vampire - he did not understand what he was doing at the start unlike Bev.

Yes and no. I mean, yes, absolutely, he was in the early stages of dementia when he got transformed, and it's absolutely understandable that he would jump to the conclusion that this was a divine miracle afterwards. (Especially given that, as mentioned, this seems to be a universe where vampire stories never became pop culture knowledge.) He also was never motived by spite or wanting to be part of an elite like Bev. And I do believe that while getting a second chance with Mildred was part of his motivation, he also truly wanted to share this unexpected miracle with his parishioners. But. The vampirisation, for lack of a better term, rejuvinated him and healed his dementia. We see this happen with Mildred later. And Mildred has no problem recognizing the wrongness of what's going on immediately once she's healed enough and exposed to it. Paul (once healed and rejuvinated) should have drawn conclusions about the nature of the miracle far sooner than he did.

Mind you, this isn't really a complaint, because I do buy that Paul is so heavily invested into this being a miracle from God that he's wilfully blinding himself to the obvious alternative and in denial, I think that's in character and it's part of why he's tragic, not evil McEvil. But he does bear a heavy responsibility for what happens.

Religious beliefs are hard to sincerely convey with sincerity and this had all these moments of different faiths and responses to trauma was gorgeous.

Very true. It's an amazing series.

[itsnotmymind]

Thanks for writing this! Sorry for taking so long to comment. I have been busy with work.

I don't think I'd noticed what a limited time frame the story plays out on, but that is true.

That is a good point about Bev vs. Pruitt. I'm not sure that I personally would have liked Pruitt any less had Bev not been in the picture, but I can see it.

[selenak]

I don't think I'd noticed what a limited time frame the story plays out on, but that is true.

I didn't realize upon first watching, either, it's just when you prompted me and I went back in my mind and compared it to other works of Flanagans' that I thought of the Easter holidays time frame and how big of a contrast that is to his more often used two timelines narrating.