‘The Midnight Membership’ on Netflix: Gripping Horror Echoes ‘Midnight Mass’

The primary time Mike Flanagan tried to adapt Christopher Pike’s younger grownup novel The Midnight Membership, Pike’s writer despatched Flanagan a stop and desist letter. Now, after carving out a profession of “status horror” choices — from the critically acclaimed Haunting anthology to Midnight Mass — the director has lastly earned a shot at taking over Pike’s materials.

The Midnight Membership, a 10-episode first season streaming on Netflix, appears to be like and seems like a chapter from the Flanaverse. But it has all of the hallmarks of a younger grownup fantasy. It is populated by ghosts, witches, zombies, cyborgs, aliens and extra. Its elevator pitch: The Fault in Our Stars meets Are You Afraid of the Darkish?

However The Midnight Membership is much extra disturbing than it sounds. A serial killer, a cult and reflections on mortality elevate The Midnight Membership to a extra subtle realm. At its core, The Midnight Membership is a shifting portrait of these processing their impending dying, when their lives have barely begun.

The Midnight Membership itself is the identify of a gathering between terminally sick teenage sufferers at Brightcliffe Hospice. These sufferers — Sandra (Annarah Cymone), Anya (Ruth Codd), Spence (Chris Sumpter), Natsuki (Aya Furukawa), Kevin (Igby Rigney), Cheri (Adia) and Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota) — creep into the library at evening to inform one another ghost tales. Drawn from different Pike novels and performed out as mini-movies, these fantastical tales replicate actuality greater than you’d assume. They permit the sufferers, dealing with their mortality, to depart one thing behind after they’re gone.

The newcomer to those longstanding halls is Ilonka (Iman Benson). A once-prospective Stanford scholar, Ilonka’s future fades with the ringing in her ears when she receives a stunning physician’s prognosis. Together with her fiercely vivid and curious thoughts, Ilonka is the right investigator into the unusual happenings at Brightcliffe. Except for a “possessed” elevator and a ghost creepily named Cataract Girl, a thriller a few potential treatment propels the primary story ahead.

Like ’80s-set The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Midnight Membership is a interval piece. Set within the ’90s, it drops era-specific different/indie songs over the credit. An eerie glare shines over characters dialing up the web on their chunk computer systems. In stark distinction, Brightcliffe breathes the 1900s. The design of this haunted home is meticulous. Round occultist symbols are seemingly echoed within the stained glass home windows and arch hallways — or is that only a charming coincidence?

Just like Midnight Mass, The Midnight Membership dangles a veracity to its unimaginable components, in order that its primary characters may simply assume a magical treatment is actual. With characters so near the brink of dying, any escape, regardless of how fantastical, is price exploring.

In delicate discussions, different figures — comparable to mysterious Dr. Georgina Stanton, performed by scream queen royalty Heather Langenkamp from A Nightmare on Elm Avenue — advocate accepting dying and appreciating life. Others search to lengthen life by less-established means, comparable to hippy-type Shasta, performed by an always-magnetic Samantha Sloyan. Together with Rahul Kohli and Zach Gilford, Sloyan is one in all a number of from Flanagan’s common appearing troupe to assist inform his newest story.

Inevitably among the ghost tales are extra thrilling, shifting and distressing than others, however all of them match surprisingly easily into the framework of episodic mini-movies. It is the climax of the ten episodes, the identical size as The Haunting of Hill Home, that does not essentially repay in a manner that wallops you within the chest — a facet impact of establishing the collection for extra to come back.

Nonetheless, as a complete, season 1 is immense. It won’t be the identical private tour de power exposé on religion as Midnight Mass, however The Midnight Membership echoes a compelling meditation on perception and its means to heal. Co-created with Bly Manor producer and author Leah Fong, The Midnight Membership is a cautious, sleek illustration of youngsters reconciling with terminal illnesses and dying. It offers with different severe areas — self-harm, intercourse, alcohol and medicines — however tragedy is not the defining issue. The Brightcliffe youngsters all have a humorousness. With compassion connecting them, love is the prevailing power regardless of how darkish the corridors develop into.

Ailing heroes face their impending doom in Mike Flanagan’s tackle younger grownup horror. The Midnight Membership is a singular, absorbing dissection of the facility of perception — reaching far past the realm of normal teenage fare.