Midnight Mass review (Patreon)

Well, I liked that on the whole, although I'd have enjoyed it more if Flanagan stopped killing off cats for shock value. This is where Mike Flanagan lets himself go wild and do whatever he wants, unlike the meticulously structured Hauntings of Hill House and Bly Manor. The results are sloppy - the first three episodes (lovably entitled "books") are supernatural soap with minimal plot structure and dialectical dicursions on faith and soteriology, while the last four rapidly devolve into survival horror. The switch is oddly paced, and the show's shapelessness serves to make some character choices puzzling (I was a little lost about Father Paul's deal in the last few episodes). Flanagan opts for anti-realism in this show, partially (though not wholly) discarding the psychological naturalism of his earlier work for more anemic cult village horror.

These aren't problems as such. The pacing feels like life in a small town does: alternating between tense, restful, and asphyxiating. A horror show centering a religious cult needs to meander a little. Flaganan knows how life in a small town Catholic parish feels: suffocating, xenophobic, and yet intoxicatingly powerful. This has a properly devastating critique of sectarian American Catholicism, identifying white nationalism and, inevitably, personal narcissism as the sociological core of communities like Crockett Island. "Small religious towns are  cults" isn't the most profound statement ever, but it's a hard one to write off.

On a personal level I appreciate this - Catholic white nationalism stole many years of my life from me and I'm still coming to terms with how it damaged me as a person and as a  Christian. Perhaps even moreso I'm grateful Flanagan, a Sam Harris-influenced atheist, uses Midnight Mass to give Catholic faith dutiful attention and treats it as a serious and basically positive thing for those who do it right. Having Leeza and Annie retain and practice their faith in the face of monstrous fundamentalism is equally appreciable; it's faith as something too beautiful to be stolen by Christofascists without glibness about the extremely severe harm and violence white supremacist Christianity has inflicted upon millions of people. The Jonestown sequence in the finale is properly horrifying: culturally hegemonic Christianity as a massacring shibboleth.

The lapsed Catholicism is woven into the show's themes. Flanagan, who was raised Catholic, lets Midnight Mass be an engine for fundamentally Catholic ideas, structuring it around Holy Week and allowing ideas like God's universal love and the Resurrection of the Body to permeate the show's imagery and plot (and also the hymns slap). A lot of it's extremely literal and silly but hard to resist: the Resurrection of the Body and Eucharist wine translating to "vampire priest" is utterly ridiculous and completely delightful. But there's also subtler things, like Father Paul continuing to be a good priest (if a murderous one) through much of the show. The show ultimately lands on a kind of secular deism, with Erin's monologue as she bleeds out amounting to "we are all One and we are God" being a little unsatisfying, but seeing a popular TV show dedicate any sort of intelligent attention to soteriology is refreshing.

Criticisms of didacticism fundamentally miss the point: discursive religious monologues are how these characters experience reality and process their faith. Even Riley, the show's tormented atheist character, has a complex relationship with and response to faith. Hassan (Rahul Kohli's turn as a hot sheriff makes me incredibly sexually confused about my politics, I must say) has hard-won faith, with the potent fact of his Islamic conversion. The show has concrete ideas about faith and God, and if Aja Romano has a problem with that it's only because they resent any semblance of coherence or thoroughness.

So yeah. This is solid stuff. It has Rahul Kohli being hot, Kate Siegel being hot, and a weirdly peppy folk rock cover of Leonard Cohen's "Democracy." It's messy and probably Flanagan's dumbest show to date, but it's hard to begrudge the show for that. Would that TV were this personal more often. If Midnight Mass wants to do discursions about faith and also dumb stuff like Vampire Priest, it's more than welcome to it. Flanagan's brand of executing anthropological horror that navigate genre tropes as systems of trauma to be compromised with big doses of cornball sentimentality is intact. If you hated The Haunting of shows, you'll probably detest this. Otherwise you might find it an interesting watch.

Also fuck Bev Keane.