Your Weekend Binge Watch: Midnight Mass
Your Weekend Binge Watch: Midnight Mass
Available to watch on Netflix; 1 season (mini-series), 7 episodes, about 45 min.-1 hour each; Horror
In honor of Halloween, the days getting shorter, and the nights getting colder, I decided it was time to snuggle up, grab the closest pillow to watch through (my chosen method of scaredy-cat viewing), and recommend some horror. This week’s pick? Midnight Mass.
Watch Midnight Mass for incredible writing, acting, and storytelling where the location of the mini-series is also a main character…and be forewarned, there are spoilers ahead.
Synopsis
A young man returns to his isolated island hometown, hoping to rebuild his life after serving several years in prison. At the same time, the arrival of a charismatic young priest brings glorious miracles, ominous mysteries, and renewed religious fervor to a dying town desperate to believe.
Thoughts
I will tell you right away that although Midnight Mass is, technically, a horror mini-series, it is one of Mike Flanagan’s subtler shows. I first started watching Mike Flanagan’s works while I was living in Dublin, Ireland and getting my Masters Degree in Theatre & Performance, sitting alone in my tiny flat, scaring myself half to death while trying to make it through an episode of The Haunting of Hill House without closing my eyes. Since then I have watched (almost) everything Mike Flanagan has created, and although I admit I haven’t seen everything yet, my favorite so far has been Midnight Mass.
Set on remote Crockett Island with a dwindling population (fewer than 150 people total), Midnight Mass is a well-crafted, well-written, and well-acted slow burn of a television show. Zach Gilford (yes, my QB1, Matt Saracen) plays Riley Flynn, a young man returning home to the primarily Catholic island where he grew up after spending four years in prison for killing a woman in a drunk-driving accident. Having lost his faith while behind bars, he returns home to reconnect with his former self and hopefully find his faith again. Although there is a lot of time dedicated to the other characters who make up the island town, including Riley’s parents and brother, his now-pregnant ex-girlfriend/childhood sweetheart Erin Greene, many people who influenced his formative years, and the mostly-accepted Muslim Sheriff Hassan and his son, it is Riley - and his struggle with faith - who is at the heart of this story.
Sounds like a slow burn, doesn’t it? Well, it is…up until the young, charismatic Father Paul Hill enters the story and takes over St. Patrick’s Church from the aging Monsignor Pruitt. With loads of charisma and an extra serving of joie de vivre, Father Paul Hill lights a figurative fire under the butts of the small island congregation as unexplained miracles start to occur, including a young, wheelchair-ridden girl standing and walking to receive Communion at his fervent behest. Able to walk, she forgives the island drunk who caused her paralysis, which then inspires him to attend an AA meeting with Riley and Father Paul. Sprinkle in some strange sightings of an unexplained entity, a few unexpected attacks, and it might just be that there’s more to Father Paul Hill than meets the eye. Now, really, truly, comes a spoiler. Turn back now if you don’t want things spoiled.
Father Paul Hill is a vampire, and he’s been microdosing the Catholic congregation with his blood in the Communion wine. Oh, and he’s also Monsignor Pruitt; they’re the same person. But this is kept secret from most of the island for a long while. Side note: Hamish Linklater was absolutely astonishing on this show. And when I watched Widow’s Bay, one of the first things I said to my boyfriend while watching it was, “Oh wow, this show feels like Midnight Mass.” My boyfriend never saw Midnight Mass, so he couldn’t really disagree with me, but I was absolutely doubled over with DELIGHT when I saw none other than Hamish Linklater ON Widow’s Bay. 10 points to me because I KNEW Widow’s Bay would deliver on my Midnight Mass feelings.
Ok, back to Midnight Mass. I know what you’re thinking: Ok, Johny, but if microdosing Catholic vampire’s blood is healing people and allowing the young girl in the wheelchair to walk and forgive the man who's caused her injury, is that so bad? Well, yes, because vampire/Father Paul Hill did it without anyone’s consent or knowledge. Full stop. He’s also…a vampire, which, is problematic. But, remember how I mentioned before that the real star of this show is Riley and how he returned to the island to find out his childhood sweetheart is pregnant? Welp, Erin drank the Communion wine, too, and because the wine was spiked with vampire blood and no one knew, her fetus vanished without any scientific explanation.
I’m not going to continue to go into excruciating and/or great detail about everything that unfolds because if you’ve seen the show then you know, and if you haven’t seen it yet, it only gets better as the show goes on. Even though I love vampire lore, what I love most about how everything unfolds in Midnight Mass is seeing the town’s divides. There are characters who believe, characters who do not, characters who have lost their faith, characters who discover their faith, characters of Muslim, non-Christian-centered faith, characters who are religious zealots, and characters who question all of it. The dynamic doesn’t just come down to black-and-white religiosity of theism vs. atheism but delves deeper into all the shades of gray that compose the ideas of faith and religious fervor set against a crazy backdrop: the elderly leader of the island’s Catholic church got lost in a storm in Jerusalem and was turned into a vampire by a being he considered to be an angel (spoiler alert: it was another vampire).
Because so many strange events and unexplained miracles happen on the island, a type of religious fever takes over, and who is at the helm alongside Father Paul Hill? None other than the church’s head zealot, Bev Keane (played incredibly by Samantha Sloyan). What starts as Riley’s slow burn journey home quickly becomes a vampire story-turned-cult show. And you know how much I love cult shows.
How Mike Flanagan manages to stoke empathy for even the most zealous religious bigots from the fire of Catholic vampire fanaticism is an art form. This story ends badly for a lot of residents of Crockett Island, and even with all the nefarious wrongdoing that has occurred, I couldn’t help but still feel sorry for them. I’m not saying it excuses any of their behavior; I’m saying that Mike Flanagan is a master of his craft. I really hope I work with him one day. Midnight Mass. Totally BingeReady.
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