Mid­night Mass is a thrilling trib­ute to Stephen King’s lit­er­ary legacy

As a film­mak­er, Mike Flanagan’s ambi­tion can­not be fault­ed. The Haunt­ing of Hill House, prob­a­bly his great­est work to date, man­aged to be a scary and mov­ing adap­ta­tion of the entire oeu­vre of Shirley Jack­son. His fol­low-up Doc­tor Sleep was by no means per­fect, but to cre­ate a cohe­sive sequel to both Stephen King’s and Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing was no mean feat. So even if The Haunt­ing of Bly Manor descend­ed into sac­cha­rine non­sense, the opti­mistic antic­i­pa­tion of Mid­night Mass is justified.

Flana­gan and his Net­flix over­lords have request­ed that jour­nal­ists dis­close as lit­tle as plot as pos­si­ble. Suf­fice it to say Mid­night Mass takes place on Crock­ett Island, 30 miles from the main­land, con­nect­ed by an infre­quent fer­ry. The com­mu­ni­ty, ​“once hun­dreds, now dozens,” sees a prodi­gal son return in the form Riley Fly­nn (Zach Gil­ford) after spend­ing a few years in prison fol­low­ing a drunk­en incident.

Also recent­ly returned to Crock­ett is Erin (Kate Siegel), a preg­nant teacher at the local school, who has escaped drugs and domes­tic abuse to start anew. When the age­ing Mon­sign­or proves too ill fol­low­ing a pil­grim­age to lead the island’s mod­est con­gre­ga­tion, Father Paul (Hamish Lin­klater) also arrives to take his place, aid­ed by the devout local busy­body Bev Keane (Saman­tha Sloyan).

Mid­night Mass is clear­ly an intense­ly per­son­al work for Flana­gan; at times he seems to be con­fess­ing his great­est fears and self-loathing direct­ly down the lens. It has been many years in the mak­ing, with the phys­i­cal Mid­night Mass texts appear­ing in both Hush and Gerald’s Game. It could be argued that it is just as much a trib­ute to the lit­er­ary lega­cy of Stephen King as his pre­vi­ous works were to Jack­son and James – but to even allude to the spe­cif­ic texts it draws from would spoil some of the fun.

The major­i­ty of the scenes are duo­logues, with var­i­ous pair­ings dis­cussing their guilt, their faith, and their hope for redemp­tion. Whether or not you engage with Mid­night Mass may come down to whether you enjoy char­ac­ters, for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son, star­ing into the mid­dle dis­tance and giv­ing long, unin­ter­rupt­ed reflec­tions about the unjust treat­ment of 19^th-cen­tu­ry Hun­gar­i­an doc­tor Ignaz Sem­mel­weis or the fast-track­ing of Mus­lim police offi­cers post ⁹⁄₁₁.

While that may sound heavy-hand­ed, the total lack of sub­text is what makes Mid­night Mass soar. Flana­gan has such con­fi­dence in his actors’ abil­i­ty to sell their solil­o­quies that the cumu­la­tive effect is mes­meris­ing. The ante­penul­ti­mate episode, where you might expect the action to be speed­ing towards a grand finale, is most­ly just two actors sit­ting on fold-out chairs in an emp­ty hall. Noth­ing much hap­pens oth­er than an intense dis­cus­sion around the nature of remorse, but Flana­gan has invest­ed so much in the pair that it is com­plete­ly compelling.

Mid­night Mass has few­er of the gim­micks that Flana­gan used to vary­ing degrees of suc­cess in his pre­vi­ous Net­flix out­ings. Instead, he intro­duces a famil­iar mythol­o­gy and makes it clear by the halfway point of the series where this is all head­ed. As a hor­ror direc­tor, Flana­gan has unde­ni­able tech­ni­cal prowess, and Mid­night Mass shows his flair for using the pow­er of sug­ges­tion to build sus­pense. He keeps macabre fig­ures to the fringes and utilis­es jump scares and grotesque vio­lence infre­quent­ly enough to give them their full pow­er. Above all, Mid­night Mass, like The Haunt­ing of Hill House, is a human sto­ry; more sad than it is scary and all the rich­er for it.

It might also be Flanagan’s cru­ellest work to date. The fates of many of these char­ac­ters are unre­lent­ing­ly grue­some. At one point they almost break the fourth wall to beg him, ​“Please, God have mer­cy, our sor­row is too much – it is too much.” He punc­tu­ates this with cuts to cred­its after some of the worst moments, one in par­tic­u­lar pay­ing direct homage to Rose Glass’ finest flour­ish in Saint Maud. There are dual focuss­es, addic­tion being at the fore for the first half of the sea­son and reli­gious zealotry tak­ing over after that. Flana­gan tack­les both with aplomb but has his most inter­est­ing ideas with the latter.

He man­ages to have fun with the most macabre sym­bol­ism of Catholi­cism while ask­ing per­ti­nent ques­tions around the con­fir­ma­tion bias of fanati­cism and the banal­i­ty of mob vio­lence. When it comes, the vio­lence is often dis­arm­ing­ly mat­ter-of-fact. For all that it can be dif­fi­cult to crit­i­cise a writer/​director bar­ing their soul the way Flana­gan does here, it’s a joy to be able to praise it. For those who grew up with com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships with faith, com­mu­ni­ty and addic­tion (and sought com­fort in Stephen King) Mid­night Mass will come as a wel­come ton­ic. Flana­gan has cre­at­ed some­thing dif­fi­cult, dev­as­tat­ing and tru­ly wonderful.