Hit Netflix Horror Series Second Only to Squid Game Among All Streaming Services

Squid Game has been the dominant force in the world of streaming over the last few weeks, but another Netflix original has quietly put up some incredible numbers of its own. Midnight Mass, the newest series from Netflix horror staple Mike Flanagan, premiered last month and got off to quite the start, it was just hard to notice exactly how successful the series was because Squid Game seemed to be taking over every metric or conversation. 

According to new numbers from Nielsen, measuring from September 27th to October 3rd, Midnight Mass was actually a massive hit for Netflix. The religious horror series was streamed more than 1.1 billion minutes over the course of that week. That was good enough for second amongst all streaming programs. Squid Game was the only series to best it, with a whopping 3.2 billion minutes streamed.

Flanagan has been a steady force in the world of horror over the last few years, and Midnight Mass represents some of his best work to-date. The series explores a small island town that has been taken over by religious extremism, and how its residents deal with their faith in the face of evil. 

Needless to say, Midnight Mass deals with some incredibly heavy subject matter. Series stars Kate Siegel and Zach Gilford spoke with about how they brought those topics to the screen.

“What I loved about it was the writing was such a support in that system, because even though I may not have the same beliefs as Erin, on the page, it was very clear that her belief made sense to her,” Siegel told us. “I wasn’t asked to make logical leaps that I didn’t understand or tap into some emotionality that didn’t exist. And so there’s this sense that there are these huge, epic questions, like ‘what’s the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Where were we before we were born?’ that everybody grapples with and everybody has a truly individual point of view on that. It’s rare to ever get to be able to express that, and so I was just, mostly, Christmas-morning joyful to get a chance to tap into the consciousness.”

“I think I had the lightest lifting of everyone, I got to just walk through and be melancholy,” Gilford added. “As long as I was genuinely believing what I was going through, I was blown away when I finally got to watch this show and the characters that people created. Everyone from Kristin (Lehman), who played my mom, to Samantha (Sloyan) who played Bev Keane, and Kate … I’m just like a guy who’s just struggling with, ‘I don’t know, this sucks.’ As long as I could go there, that was fine, I didn’t have to put, on top of that, create a person who’s feeling that. I was blown away by everyone when I got to watch it and I felt like I had the easiest job.”

All seven episodes of Midnight Mass are currently streaming on Netflix.