‘Midnight Mass’ Is a Chilling and Atmospheric Study of Religion

Mike Flanagan’s third Netflix series may be his strongest yet

Netflix

Writer and director Mike Flanagan has made a name for himself with his depth of storytelling and his penchant for the macabre. From Doctor Sleep, Oculus, and Ouija, to The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and The Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan may be one of the most prolific horror writers of our time behind Stephen King himself. With most of his movies achieving box office success, and nearly all of his shows on Netflix celebrating enduring reigns as top-watched shows, few can claim more influence over the direction that the genre has taken in recent years.

While his flair for storytelling and proclivity for the creepy is present in each of his theatrical projects, films like Doctor Sleep suffer from a certain congestion. They make clear that his approach to narratives is better served by the opportunity to stretch for a whole season’s duration. But despite his streaming successes, he’s admirably resisted the urge to simply rehash his well-loved casts of characters for the sake of cash alone. None of his shows have had second seasons and that design resulted from a conscious decision.

Instead, as in American Horror Story, we’ll see a recurrent series of faces throughout his shows. Yet each time they return, they embody their new characters with poise and never feel like products of fan service so much as a result of the chemistry that Flanagan has built up with these actors over time. He understands where each of them shines and utilizes their talents well.

Almost every actor that populates the small town of Crockett Island occurs within a prior Flanagan project, and that well-established interplay between the cast is palpable. The town feels every bit as rustic, charming, and atmospheric as it does eerie and foreboding. It’s gloomy, desolate, and wind-swept, but nostalgic and serene. It strikes a similar feeling of discordance to the warm colors of Jordan Peele’s Get Out that lingers even as the plot grows darker and darker. Crockett Island, or the “Crock Pot” as its residents call it, feels like a lived-in world. Its characters are each so multi-faceted that it’s easy to sympathize with drunken murderers and hit-and-run drivers.

By contrast, it’s the characters who pervert the word of religious scripture, and pick and choose the parts that support their personal agendas and ambitions, that elicit a shared spite from viewers. Samantha Sloan’s Bev Keane personifies what can make religion such a danger when left in the wrong hands. There’s no heinous action for which she can’t find some contorted, biblical excuse. There’s no atrocity that she doesn’t play off by citing an angry, Old Testament God.

Rahul Kohli offers another standout performance as the town’s sheriff and an ostracized, practicing Muslim in a town where the Church serves as the central, uniting glue. The orbital structure is a worn, timeless monolith atop a hill that stands as a source of constancy and tradition within the ramshackle town. It’s the nucleus without which the humble bureau ceases to function.

Beginning the show, it may be easy to think that its central aim is to proselytize. It paints an apparently favorable image of Christianity, and it presents the pastor as a thoughtful, approachable, and unpretentious leader, perfectly portrayed by the even-kilter Hamish Linklater. Taking over as the town’s new priest, Father Paul is empathetic, approachable, and enthusiastic enough about the betterment of his community that he instills the town with new life (both literally and figuratively). He’s fanatical but charitable and exudes enough virtue that it’s easy for even an avowed atheist to find merit in his character. Whether a religious or secular audience, there’s something to appreciate in Flanagan’s message about the way a valuable teaching can be toxified.

But perhaps not unpredictably, things aren’t as they initially seem. Father Paul’s priesthood is flawed to its core. Even the town’s most self-proclaimed children of God show a wicked side.

There’s a philosophical depth to Flannigan’s writing that’s well suited by this introspective theme and stark, unforgiving environment at sea. It serves as the perfect backdrop for conversations about life, death, and the nature of God and religion. It’s often in these conversations where the show shines most. As in The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, the characters come to life in their drawn-out discourse. But unlike his 2023 adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher, the onslaught of protagonists is likable almost through and through.

Another distinguishing factor of the show is in its rare depiction of vampirism that rises beyond hokey cliches. Flanagan cleverly contorts the idea of divinity and eternal life by conflating it with the immortality of those undead, two-fanged cryptids that populate urban legends.

The slow-building plot also serves the modern take on Dracula-adjacent material well. 2024’s long-delayed and straight-to-Max streaming release, Salem’s Lot, by contrast, suffers with pacing in its attempt at a comparable story — also depicting a quaint town plagued by a coffin-dwelling monster. In Midnight Mass, though, the paranoia that comes with being preyed upon by a flying assailant is masterfully slow-mounting.

It’s unreliant on jump scares to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The dread that gradually permeates the island and its residents is what makes the show feel most chilling. It’s not devoid of pop-outs, but they’re employed sparingly enough to never feel obtrusive.

The final episode features the use of the song “Nearer, My God, to Thee” that rivals the string rendition of the song featured at the end of Titanic in its efficacy. It denotes a similarly striking feeling of hope enduring through unspeakable tragedy, and it serves as one of the most beautiful and wonderfully conclusive endings to a TV show in recent memory. It drives home so much of the emotional pang and pathos that exalted The Haunting of Hill House a few years prior.

It’s rare these days for movies and shows to include only what’s essential and never stretch on for longer than necessary or overstay their welcome. Mike Flanagan’s work stands as a crowning example of what can happen when a writer loves his stories and characters enough to build them up and let them go. It will be a thrill to see who he crafts next.

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This article was originally published on Medium.

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