New limited series from Mike Flanagan. I just started it tonight and liked the first episode really well. I thought Haunting of Hill House was amazing and that Bly House was…well, pretty good.
Reviews for Midnight Mass are really great. It drops all at once since it is Netflix and is only seven episodes long.
Anyone else start it yet?
We’re watching it, and mostly enjoying it. We just finished the 5th episode.
It’s not great, though- as it’s very predictable. We haven’t been surprised by a single plot point yet, and I’m pretty sure I know exactly what the last scene in the series will be.
The old age makeup was pretty distractingly bad in the first few episodes.
Hey, I have watched two episodes and here are my wife and my predictions. These are all “so predictable”, we are hoping they are not true. I’ll spoiler box, but is full speculation.
I’m sure we have others, but that is where we are at now.
Wife and I watched the first ep last night. Not bad. We’ll keep watching.
Hamish Linklater certainly has done a good job changing up his acting persona from amiable, dorky secondary character to straight-up creeper.
I watched through the fifth episode yesterday but now am tempted to go back to see what clues we were given to what’s going on. For example, I thought the priest wasn’t avoiding sunlight in earlier episodes.
I’m 4 or 5 episodes in now. I’m pretty sure what’s going on is:
The blood from the demon-angel-vampire thing in that underground temple in the desert outside Jerusalem made Father Pruitt young again, but he was still human for awhile. Then Pruitt had the episode where he collapsed in his house, vomiting blood, and didn’t have a pulse. Then he suddenly woke up. That was when he ‘turned’ and became a full-fledged vampire, who was then burned by the sun and needed to drink blood.
Pruitt had smuggled the demon-vampire thing back home in some box of antiquities or something, and he requires the blood of the demon-vampire to add to the communion wine in order to heal his congregation and perform miracles.
Not clear to me yet:
I have watched through episode 5 and the series is pretty good, but not totally amazing. Much like Bly House, they relied on(I’ll spoiler this even though it isn’t a massive spoiler)
Main character having a vision of a person. I think in Bly House, she kept seeing an ex-boyfriend or something. In this show, he sees the girl he killed in the drunk driving accident.
Both went essentially nowhere. Not nowhere, but more or less.
I’ll just say this: Riley broke my heart to pieces. Brutal.
Once again, thanks to Mahaloth for turning me on to a great show. I stayed up too late last night watching the first two eps; if it had been a weekend night I would have kept watching.
So far I love almost everything about this except I really could have done without the cat corpses and dying dog scenes. Just a personal sore spot with me but also stops me from recommending it to a few folks I think would otherwise like it. Also, too many jump scares. It’s already gotten to the point where any time Riley is alone I get all tensed up waiting for him to see the dead girl, but not in a good, suspenseful way; just an annoyed “get it over with” way.
I’m glad to see Hamish Linklater again. I adored him in “The New Adventures” but like him even more as a creeper.
OK, my wife and I watched ep5 (Gospels V) last night. That was a doozy of an episode ending!
Some thoughts: maybe I’m giving the show too much credit because it’s basically just another show about vampires, but there are some interesting themes being explored:
Making a connection between Christianity and tropes of vampirism. Yeah, I always thought that the whole Jesus “eat of my flesh, drink of my blood” thing was a bit creepy if you really think about it. I understand the symbolism of it. but Catholicism takes it even further with the whole 'transubstantiation" thing-- the belief that the bread and wine literally turn into the body and blood of Christ at the moment of Communion. So the Communion wine being spiked with the blood of the angel /demon thing is pretty on the nose. Personal anecdote: when I was getting married in the Catholic church, before I walked out I was waiting “backstage” in a back room where the altar boys prepared the Communion elements, and there was an amusing sign over the sink (paraphrased from memory): “Do not pour leftover Communion wine down the sink! Remember, it’s the actual blood of Christ!”.
Making the point that in all religions, any atrocity can be explained away as “the will of God”. It’s not an original theme, but if an evil supernatural being fulfilled wishes or performed miracles, many people would mistakenly take it to be a savior. And true believers like Bev have an answer for EVERYTHING: blood drinking? Covered in the above point, of course. Then, as Riley asked in last night’s episode: “what about the sun burning our skin? That’s not in the bible.” Bev: “Isn’t it? Read Revelation!” Apparently there’s stuff about angels making the sun burn people, and then plunging the Earth into darkness. “It’s all in the bible!” Bev preaches / screeches.
I kind of disagree with this. At the end of ep5, as he was burning to death, Riley had the vision of the girl he killed, now whole again and smiling, and taking his hand in forgivness. See, that’s yer classic redemption arc right there. A bit overdone and tropey, but there ya go.
I had to scan/scroll through these posts quickly because I’ve only seen E1 and didn’t want to come across any spoilers. So far it’s great. I’ve always loved the spooky type of horror movies, and hate the slasher type.
Nice post. I normally avoid shows like this, but a WSJ review sort of intrigued me. Raising all the points your post mentioned. This genre has so much shlock in it, so its been refreshing to see a “serious” attempt to cover these “subjects”…and what if what if its true!!! Too much iron in your blood you are in trouble!
Im just at the last episode, should be a doozy!! Really liked Rileys character and feel like its a breakout role for Zach Gilford.
Watched two more eps.
I was kind of disappointed that this turned out to be a vampire story but everything else about this is outstanding; the peformances, the dialogue… they balance out the supernatural element so as to almost make it believable. This is as much a heart wrenching drama as it is a horror show.
If you enjoy director Mike Flanagan’s work, as I do, I recommend the low budget Absentia (movie, not the series).
I’m half way through the series so far. It has been very good so far.
I’ll be back when I get through the rest of it.
I finished it last night and I thought it was OK, but not great. Good acting, not a great story for me.
I finished it last night. The story was decent and I thought that it was daring in some respects, but I also thought that the direction was rather mediocre. Action scenes were awkward and the blocking was rather poor. It was noticeable. (Compare, for example, to how Scorsese gets things to flow smoothly in his movies. No, I don’t expect Flanagan to be as good as Scorsese, but the issues were apparent enough that I actually pointed them out to my wife on occasion as we were watching.)
Doctor Sleep shows that at times, Flanagan can almost equal the great directors. It’s a great movie and one of the best of its year. Midnight Mass was only ever OK though.
Squid Game is much better and so just dropped in Netflix
I just finished and the final episode was just disappointing.
Poorly written and conceived.
Parts were interminable slow also. So let’s add poor direction and editing.
Sad, I liked the first 5 episodes.
I found the whole thing messed up and I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t super original and the makeup and hair was really terrible, but it was enjoyable. Well, not fun enjoyable but a good popcorn viewing.
Other than the makeup/hair, the one major bad point was it was a little too King derivative. It was like a 'Salem’s Lot meets Storm of the Century with Mrs Carmody from The Mist or Carrie’s mother thrown in.
I thought the acting was really good from the priest especially, but yes there weren’t too many unexpected twists and everyone had to give their backstory and monologue. Just reams of text. Agreed it would have been better if 'Salem’s Lot had never existed (and it’s on Riley’s bookshelf!) but no one says the V-Word. (Is that a spoiler?)