A major part of anyone’s adolescence is confronting the things that most scare you, whether that results in you overcoming those fears or finding out your own limits. This can be true of the transition into adulthood and all the obstacles that come with it, or true even of just the stories we invest in. For teens who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s especially, one foundational voice in these horrors is Christopher Pike, who delivered dozens of terrifying tales for burgeoning horror fans. The new series The Midnight Club from Netflix might lift its name from one specific Pike story, though its entirety serves as a tribute to the writer’s impressive catalog. Serving somewhat as an anthology, somewhat as an overarching narrative, The Midnight Club succeeds in telling competent horror stories with as much diversity as the figures in the Midnight Club itself, though never exceeds the effectiveness of the source material.ย
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Set in a home for terminally ill teenagers in 1994, the residents regularly gather at midnight to tell each other frightening stories. While many of these stories are flights of fancy, the teens start to see eerie signals that the death that their home has witnessed might make it a home for more than they bargained for.ย
When it comes to borrowing elements from multiple narratives and weaving them together into one adventure, there are few hands more trusted in the world of horror than Flanagan. The Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor both borrowed elements from Shirley Jackson and Henry James, respectively, and injected new concepts to create critically acclaimed experiences. The overall structure and format of The Midnight Club makes possible a remix of elements that his previous series couldn’t afford him, yet this formula also makes it the most difficult to invest in.
Both storytelling elements in this series absolutely work. The running thread of a mysterious and possibly deadly secret being contained within a home meant to help youths take their transition to death into their own hands crafts an engaging thriller that delves into the supernatural. The deviations of delivering the stories that the teens are telling also work, as this detachment from reality makes it possible for the series to explore a much wider array of terror. From episode to episode, we can jump from ghost stories to sci-fi to ’50s throwbacks, all of which have the right blend of whimsy and fright. The series’ shortcomings, sadly, are intrinsic in the approach to adapting the source material.
The overall narrative stretches across 10 one-hour episodes, with some installments leaning more heavily on the 1994-based story while others spend more time depicting the tales being told. The challenge is that viewers are first tasked with investing in these fictional characters, with us then being tasked with investing in the outcomes of the stories these characters are telling. Were the series to have been a traditional anthology, we would enter an all-new reality with each episode, but by telling stories within a story, there’s too much disconnect for audiences to invest much in these campfire tales. This undercuts the effectiveness of each of these experiences, and by having episodes with such a long run time, it can become an exhausting experience.
Another stylistic choice that both helps and hurts the series is that, within each vignette being told, the actors who make up the real-world narrative also play parts in these stories being told by the Midnight Club. This helps enrich the audience both to the performers and the characters they’re playing in the overall narrative, and evokes a more intimate immersion into their world. On the flip side, by the time we get to the season finale, this blur between the realities of the series ignites confusing elements, where audiences aren’t always sure whether they’re seeing reality, a story within a story, or a possible reveal that what we thought was a reality was, in fact, just another story.ย
Narrative struggles aside, The Midnight Club is still assuredly effective. Flanagan has a knack for blurring the lines between genres, telling stories that are equally effective as horrors or dramas or romances, which he continues with this series. Part of the reason young horror fans are so interested in the genre is because that is around the time we begin to come to grips with our own mortality, even if it’s in a majorly ambiguous way. The show fully embraces all of the fears that come along with becoming an adult, whether those be the universal struggle of our own eventual demise or the more specific challenge of coming to terms with one’s sexuality and all the judgment that brings along with it. All of the characters in the ensemble circumvent expectations and come from compelling performers, making for a teen-oriented series that felt like it could only come from the pages of Pike. With each character living on borrowed time, seeing them regale one another with spooky stories endears us to them, making their potential passing all the more heartbreaking. Much like our friendships at any ages, we’re really all living on borrowed time, with The Midnight Club reminding us not to squander these relationships while we have them, while also not letting us define that time by their expiration dates.
Flanagan’s skills as a storyteller peaked with last year’s Midnight Mass, thanks in large part to how it successfully managed to build the dramatic and horrifying narrative momentum organically and at an equal rate, only for The Midnight Club to mark a regression. Each component on its own might work, but they fail to gel together into a cohesive final product. By offering a story more authentic to teenagers (there’s cursing and sex, though without fully embracing an R-rated tone and feeling more like PG-15), The Midnight Club could be the perfect gateway drug for burgeoning horror fans to invest more in the genre or specifically Pike, while older audiences will likely connect less with the disjointed horrors and more with the nature of our own eventual demise. We can run from it and we can be scared of it, but that won’t stop it from coming, inspiring us to take stock and appreciate what we have while we have it.
Rating: 3 out of 5
The Midnight Club is now available to stream on Netfliix.
