The Midnight Club
It was 2018 when I first heard about Mike Flanagan. He wrote and directed the most perfectly modernized and expanded version of The Haunting of Hill House for Netflix. It was the first time that I really felt that someone understood what Shirley Jackson was trying to do, and yes, that meant no Owen Wilson being decapitated I'm glad to say. He followed this up with The Haunting of Bly Manor two years later, making an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw that was actually watchable. I have issues with that Henry James story, to be sure, but Mike Flanagan made me forget them. Everyone wanted to know what classic piece of "house" horror literature was to follow, and it did take awhile to find out we'd be getting some Edgar Allan Poe with The Fall of the House of Usher, but he tided us over with the original Midnight Mass. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, it was announced he was adapting Christopher Pike's The Midnight Club. While the premise seemed dark, a hospice for terminally ill kids, I had faith in Flanagan. Faith in him and his stable of actors. Because like all the great directors, or like Ryan Murphy, Flanagan has drawn to him a troupe. I could just say Rahul Kohli and leave it at that, but I won't. OK, I will. I seriously only need Rahul to be happy. The problem is Flanagan envisioned this show as being a two season arc but he wasn't guaranteed the second season and then he went and signed a massive deal with Netflix's rival Amazon and that coupled with low ratings meant the show was cancelled and nothing was resolved. He thankfully posted what he had planned to achieve over two seasons and seeing as the pacing was so glacial he could have easily done what he wanted to in one. I mean, seriously, it took me months just to finish this first season and that took a lot of willpower. This series just had something missing. It was a disconnect. Like it caught the nineties vibe so well, but it was all surface. If you looked too closely you saw the cracks. You might have been brought to tears by a certain Green Day song, but when you realize they're somehow singing it two years too early you're taken out of the moment. And if you get distracted by Igby Rigney's clenched jaw head-tilt smile that perfectly channels Christian Slater just remember you could actually be watching Christian Slater instead of his and Ethan Embry's love child. I don't know what could have made it work. But the fatal flaw was trying to have each actor do too much. They have their main characters and then the characters they play in the stories they tell. Each episode does it's own horror trope, from Japanese horror to Black Swan psychological to teen serial killer to noir. And the way these stories within the story were told seemed a little too not just gimmicky but contrived. Like it was amateur dramatics in high school. In fact for some reason I'm thinking of the dream sequence in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season four episode "Restless." It was like that level of bad acting but not on purpose. And don't get me started on how the bad wigs just added to the problem. This is easily Mike Flanagan's weakest show and I think the reason is it comes off as amateurish. This is the first project he has done based on material for a younger audience and I just don't think he knows how to write for that audience yet.
After seeing the amazing interpretation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House that Mike Flanagan pulled off I was beyond excited for The Haunting of Bly Manor. And this was only approximately 79% to do with Rahul Kohli being cast. OK, it was probably closer to 100% because I am not a fan of The Turn of the Screw like I am with The Haunting of Hill House, but that's why this adaptation is so perfect, it made me like The Turn of the Screw and the other stories by Henry James that were incorporated. This miniseries turned a bleak tale of possible madness into a love story. And not just a single love story either! There are many couples to ship here. In fact this show might have healed and broken my heart simultaneously. If someone were to say to me "it's you, it's me, it's us" I would probably break down sobbing right this second. Yet this phrase which comes to mean so much about the power of love started out menacing. That's what's amazing here. The way the story unfolds. What was one thing becomes another and another and everything you think you knew keeps changing. This is a miniseries that could easily be rewatched the second you finish it just to fill in the gaps you might have missed. The one thing I found odd when reading reviews of what people have dubbed the second season of Mike Flanagan's "Haunting" series is that so many people took exception to the penultimate episode shot in black and white, "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes." This episode set centuries earlier explains how Bly Manor came to be the haunted place it is with Mike Flanagan's wife, Kate Siegel, Theo from The Haunting of Hill House, taking center stage. This episode is lyrical and perfectly paced. There are phrases that come back to me again and again while thinking about this show. "She would sleep, she would wake, she would walk." And while yes, this could be a way to explain all our lives during quarantine and it's repetitive nature, it also taps into the broken record aspect of a haunting. How ghosts are just reliving the same moments over and over again which is why the penultimate episode is crucial! This show is time loops and the supernatural and true love all mashed up together and all I have to say is more!
