Midnight Mass

[lizmonster]

Just finished this last night.

I'm not certain what I thought in the end. It was entertaining, and occasionally really sharp and observant. I cried more than once.

And I suppose it's churlish to say I'm not entirely sure what the point of it was.

I'm one of a small group of people who really didn't care for Interview With the Vampire, or indeed any of Rice's iconic Lestat stuff. It struck me as nihilistic, in a way that wasn't enjoyable. Nobody learned anything, nobody was redeemed, awful characters continued being awful, full stop. I found it empty, which as a reader felt like a different thing than just negative.

Midnight Mass was sort of the opposite. It seemed to be making some statement about the fundamental value of good intentions, but I'm not sure what that statement was.

Some of this may be that I'm not a religious person, and I found the religious framework puzzling. Flanagan may have been going for a "religion is bad but faith is good" thing. I'm honestly not sure, and that may be because I'm lacking the social framework to interpret the subtleties.

I think there's also a good chance that here, as with Hill House, he simply didn't stick the landing.

But I'm not at all sorry I watched it. So thumbs up with reservations, I guess.

 

[Introversion]

I'm one of a small group of people who really didn't care for Interview With the Vampire, or indeed any of Rice's iconic Lestat stuff.

Heh heh. I still remember our first date, in a bookstore, with you asking me whether I’d read Rice’s books and if so, what I thought of them. Apparently, my honest answer was the right one.

 

[Diana Hignutt]

I like Rice's prose in her early and middle period, but her characters not so much. I will also say that she has always been kind to me personally, so there's that. I have not seen this film and am unlikely to.

 

[lizmonster]

I like Rice's prose in her early and middle period, but her characters not so much. I will also say that she has always been kind to me personally, so there's that. I have not seen this film and am unlikely to.

I gotta say, it's always nice to hear someone famous is a decent person. One does hold one's breath these days.

I'm an extreme outlier where Rice is concerned. Rarely, something with a massive fan base just doesn't work for me. I'd have forgiven Intro if he liked her, but it would have made certain conversations a little awkward.

To be clear - since I realize I said nothing in the initial post - Midnight Mass isn't a Rice property. It's a Netflix miniseries written by Mike Flanagan, the same guy who did The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Oculus. I've seen enough of his work now to get a sense of him as a deeply sentimental horror filmmaker, but of all four of these works, only Oculus really follows through on its horror premise.

Spoiler: for Midnight Mass:

What Midnight Mass shares with Rice is vampires. Even my horror-loving child kept saying "Dude, that does NOT look like an angel, wtf." There are a lot of aspects of the plot that don't really bear close examination.

What it does do well is offer us a wide variety of realistically broken people. And like I said upthread, I'm not sure what we were supposed to get from this narrative. To me, it seemed nihilistic in the same way Rice's vampires were nihilistic, but I was clearly not supposed to feel that way. Rice's nihilism was naked; here it was wrapped in both arrogance and pointless sacrifice.

That it included some beautiful speeches didn't change that, at least for me.

 

[Diana Hignutt]

I gotta say, it's always nice to hear someone famous is a decent person. One does hold one's breath these days.

I'm an extreme outlier where Rice is concerned. Rarely, something with a massive fan base just doesn't work for me. I'd have forgiven Intro if he liked her, but it would have made certain conversations a little awkward.

To be clear - since I realize I said nothing in the initial post - Midnight Mass isn't a Rice property. It's a Netflix miniseries written by Mike Flanagan, the same guy who did The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Oculus. I've seen enough of his work now to get a sense of him as a deeply sentimental horror filmmaker, but of all four of these works, only Oculus really follows through on its horror premise.

Spoiler: for Midnight Mass:

What Midnight Mass shares with Rice is vampires. Even my horror-loving child kept saying "Dude, that does NOT look like an angel, wtf." There are a lot of aspects of the plot that don't really bear close examination.

What it does do well is offer us a wide variety of realistically broken people. And like I said upthread, I'm not sure what we were supposed to get from this narrative. To me, it seemed nihilistic in the same way Rice's vampires were nihilistic, but I was clearly not supposed to feel that way. Rice's nihilism was naked; here it was wrapped in both arrogance and pointless sacrifice.

That it included some beautiful speeches didn't change that, at least for me.

'
Yep, that was totally clear from the context, but I have never seen any of Mr. Flanagan's films. Instead, I thought I would mildly and partially jump to Rice's defence.

 

[lizmonster]

'
Yep, that was totally clear from the context, but I have never seen any of Mr. Flanagan's films. Instead, I thought I would mildly and partially jump to Rice's defence.

FWIW, Hill House is IMO the best of the bunch, although the ending is completely wrong. The Kid loves Oculus, which is a solid horror movie and kind of a downer.

 

[Introversion]

I'd have forgiven Intro if he liked her, but it would have made certain conversations a little awkward.

I really didn’t like Queen of the Damned, and IIRC, gave you my honest if somewhat brutal opinion on it. Now, as a would-be author, I’m a little embarrassed about why I thought I knew enough to render that opinion so confidently.

But hey, now I’m glad it was a well-received opinion.

 

[lizmonster]

I really didn’t like Queen of the Damned, and IIRC, gave you my honest if somewhat brutal opinion on it. Now, as a would-be author, I’m a little embarrassed about why I thought I knew enough to render that opinion so confidently.

One privilege of being a reader - whether or not you are always a writer - is that you may love or loathe any work you like, and you are never wrong. Art is subjective.

 

[Woollybear]

I enjoyed the vampire work when I was younger, before I had such a trigger to death in fiction, and her framing of the world as the savage garden has stayed with me ever since.

It did seem nihilistic, but on the other hand Louis made the ongoing centuries-long effort to hold onto his humanity against impossible odds. He ate rats to do so. He's a killer through no fault of his own, a sympathetic monster I suppose, and he has no hope of salvation, but he tries his damnedest to cause as little pain as possible as he struggles through another day. His 'interview' extended the metaphor to communication--trying to communicate his viewpoint to the mortal world--and this feels deeply human, as we try to convey the pain we feel to others and yet so often it seems they cannot understand.

Rice lost a child to leukemia, and I often felt that her pain may have colored the vampire series, but she has never said as much, to my knowledge. So it simply 'fits' to me, but it may or may not be true.

I didn't read her christian works, but I still love her early stuff, less now for the story and more for the mastery she shows over language. Such lush writing. I could eat it up.

Yes, subjective. I might hate it were I to pick it up for the first time today.

 

[Sage]

I loved Hill House (despite the ending) and Bly Manor. I wasn't sure about this one going in, and even throughout it felt that it wasn't hitting me the way the Haunting series did. The setting wasn't intriguing me and the people weren't as compelling to me and there was nothing going on in the background and they killed all the cats and the things that I could predict seemed like they were obvious to predict

Spoiler

(though apparently not, as my friend asked me after episode 7, "So they were all vampires?" and I was like, "Wasn't that spelled out for us in episode 3?" Then again, I grew up with Buffy...)

. Still, in the end, it had me thinking about it for a few days now, and I may have to rewatch just to see how things play out when you know everything.

I am really intrigued to hear what people of different faiths think about the series. I think it left lots of ambiguity about whose beliefs were right, and I was surprised that the first review I saw about it was an atheist who felt like the show had made them feel left out. The two main characters both give us reason to believe that an atheist viewpoint might be the correct one. Riley gives us the full atheist view on death, with a believe that in our last moments, we all have this wonderful dream before ceasing to exist, and there's nothing in the series that suggests he's wrong. Erin's final monologue of the series also suggests death ends in something other than the Christian view of Heaven, however, I can also see it being interpreted as people joining God in a way too.

Spoiler

In fact both of their deaths can be open to interpretation: Is Riley having a wonderful dream where his brain finally allows him to forgive himself (perhaps because he knows he has done all he can do to save Erin and his family), or is Tara-Beth welcoming him to Heaven?

Likewise, one of the characters who comes across as sanest in this town is the sheriff, who is Muslim.

I am far from Christian, but I'm not a fan of when fiction completely demonizes Christianity. I was quite worried here that this was going to be a show that did so. I was pleasantly surprised that there was more nuance to the subject. People found comfort in their faith (so much so that that review I mentioned above felt that it alienated the review who wasn't Christian; ignoring, IMO, that everyone was finding comfort in their faiths except one (Christian) person, regardless of what the faith was). Christian faith led to positive things like forgiveness, which in turn led to someone trying to improve himself. The priest truly believed that he was helping everybody in town, and in some cases, I think he did. Ed and Annie were truly happier for much of the series compared to where they began, and possibly remained truest of everyone to their faith right to the end. However there were also scenes of religious fanaticism and mob mentality that led to "righteous" destruction, and I think we see plenty of that in the real world too. Then there's Bev, who uses Christianity for her own purposes, continuously drawing on the Bible to revise each new situation for her own goals. You can watch the wheels in her head turning each time something new came up, and then she'd spit out a verse so she could keep going on the path she had chosen.

Some of this may be that I'm not a religious person, and I found the religious framework puzzling. Flanagan may have been going for a "religion is bad but faith is good" thing. I'm honestly not sure, and that may be because I'm lacking the social framework to interpret the subtleties.

This may, indeed, be the message, now that I look at it. There definitely seemed to be a positive message about having faith, of any kind, at the end, but that faith can be perverted by finding a specific structure through religion. Certainly I see a big difference between Annie's faith, the priest's faith, and Bev's use of religion for her own purposes.

Moving on from religion/faith, I though that there were some good analogies going on to current events. The rush to get hands on a miracle cure here in the time of COVID is fairly obvious, and I got flashes of January 6 in the mob scenes, complete with people getting to the other side and regretting all that they'd done.

I really enjoyed episode 7 and thought the landing was stuck better than the rest of the series (although I seemed to prefer the odd episodes: 3, 5, 7); I had been a little disappointed by the execution of episode 6 after excellent 5, which I had to pause for a few days after.

 

[Introversion]

I was surprised that the first review I saw about it was an atheist who felt like the show had made them feel left out.

As an atheist, I tend towards a fairly active disinterest in strongly religious-themed shows or books, and consequently just don't often watch/read them. So, I'm a little bemused that any atheistic viewer could feel "left out" of a show using, at least in the trailers, obvious strong religious tropes and themes. It seems a bit like an avid meat-eater complaining that a show about vegans and vegan recipes "leaving them out"? Like, duh?

 

[Sage]

As an atheist, I tend towards a fairly active disinterest in strongly religious-themed shows or books, and consequently just don't often watch/read them. So, I'm a little bemused that any atheistic viewer could feel "left out" of a show using, at least in the trailers, obvious strong religious tropes and themes. It seems a bit like an avid meat-eater complaining that a show about vegans and vegan recipes "leaving them out"? Like, duh?

I wonder if they went in with an expectation that this horror show would demonize Christianity & were disappointed that there were positive, as well as the negative, themes.

 

[lizmonster]

I wonder if they went in with an expectation that this horror show would demonize Christianity & were disappointed that there were positive, as well as the negative, themes.

I can't speak for all atheists, but I don't expect/hope for any show to demonize religion - or at least faith.

I do think this show in particular wanted to have its cake and eat it, too. It pretty clearly slammed Biblical literalism, and yet had its villain quoting scripture in a very Devilish way.

Also

Spoiler

Crosses seemed to hurt those turned vampire, another religion = truth thing. But while the Monsignor told himself, and everybody else, that he'd returned to the island to "save" them, it turned out his big motivation was an attempt to get a replay of the secular life he'd never had the strength to stand up and claim.

So he was punished for that; fine. But it seems to me the entire town was slaughtered for one man's vanity.

Bev was an easy villain, but I honestly had no idea who to root for.

 

[Introversion]

I wonder if they went in with an expectation that this horror show would demonize Christianity & were disappointed that there were positive, as well as the negative, themes.

Possibly? That reflects badly on them, if so. (I have strong opinions on religions, but so long as their believers don't try to legislate their beliefs, I have no issues with them or desire to see their beliefs destroyed.)

 

[Lyv]

As an atheist, one thing I loved was that

Spoiler

the atheist didn't have some religious conversion and did something heroic, but he had also done bad things. I liked that he got to talk about his beliefs at length, which isn't always my experience as an out, open atheist. And it was the same with the people of faith. Some were good people whose faith made them sacrifice themselves not to do harm, and some were corrupted easily and some regretted their faith leading them to do harm. Just like real life. Except for the vampires.

I wondered what the deal was was all the Neil Diamond songs in the first several episodes, and since my older sister was a superfan--in 1981, I won second row tickets for one of is concerts for her, while at work on a rotary phone. 99th caller--I know all his songs and there are more with religious imagery I kept expecting to show up (not a complaint, no offense to Neil Diamond fans. I'm not a hater)

The last two episodes were the weakest, I thought, but I cried and I'm glad I watched. I found it interesting that there was a callback to Erin's story to Riley about having to hold the dove (?) while her mother clipped their wings and then she may have saved everyone by "clipping" the "angel's" wings.

 

[lizmonster]

Couple other things:

Spoiler

- Erin's miscarriage was never properly explained. Was she supposed to be getting younger, so her body just kind of...reabsorbed the pregnancy? It'd be one thing if she'd been 8, or even 12 weeks, but 20?

- We *think* the "angel" was crippled and didn't make it to the mainland, but we don't know. What's the message there? Are they leaving room for a sequel, or suggesting that not only were all these deaths unnecessary, they didn't prevent anything at all?

Yeah, the ending was kind of a mess. The Kid still loved it.

 

[Sage]

Ooh, I missed that being a callback to the bird story!

I’m okay with ambiguous endings, & Flanagan seems to like them. That we don’t get a definitive answer as to what happens next

Spoiler

after death, to Warren & Leeza, to the vampangel

is okay with me. Maybe there’s meant to be room for a sequel, but I suspect that was not the intention.

 

[Lyv]

I feel the fate of the angel

Spoiler

is revealed in Leeza's comment to Warren that she couldn't feel her legs. That's when the sun caught up to the vampire. The turned had already burned up because they were stuck on the island, but the creature was trying to outrun the sun (Warren said so, and it makes sense) and that moment, when Leeza was (sniffle) paralyzed again, was when the creature died. So, Erin succeeded, but couldn't inflict enough harm to save the islanders. But at least I can feel that even if Leeza and Warren have to go back onto the island, they're not going to run into a vampire that managed to find a hiding place, like the trench Bev belatedly tried to dig or something built out of debris, because they would have turned back when the "angel" burnt up.

 

[lizmonster]

OH that makes sense!

 

[Introversion]

I feel the fate of the angel…

Spoiler: But are they really safe now?

(I saw parts of the last episode.)

That’s a plausible theory. But it seems unlikely to me that the “angel” was truly the one & only remaining vampire in the entire world?

 

[Lyv]

I didn't any anything about the existence of others.

Spoiler

Only my belief about the fate of the one creature, the islanders, and the safety of the kids if they had to go back to the much- closer island instead of directly to the mainland.

 

[Introversion]

I didn't any anything about the existence of others.

Spoiler

Only my belief about the fate of the one creature, the islanders, and the safety of the kids if they had to go back to the much- closer island instead of directly to the mainland.

No, but it would make sense if there were.

Spoiler: Others?

Clearly, vampirism spreads easily. For it not to be a global pandemic, either they’re very rare, or very careful & secretive. Not sure that this “angel” fits the latter, from what little I saw of the series? “Rare” fits I guess.

Sorry, I don’t mean to rathole this thread. Just responding to the idea that the kids can wash their hands of vampirism entirely. If I’d gone through what they did, I’d want to live on a garlic farm, surrounded by UV spotlights and generators.

 

[Lyv]

Introversion said:

Spoiler

Just responding to the idea that the kids can wash their hands of vampirism entirely.

I just want to make it clear that idea is your own and was not in my post. I'm not upset, not even annoyed. I just kept my post narrow for a reason. If there's a second season, that's something that could be explored, though, especially if there's a time jump. If there is, I hope the writers follow your ideas/ musings. But I was just riffing on the ending and immediate aftermath.

 

[Introversion]

I just want to make it clear that idea is your own and was not in my post.

Sure, sorry if it seemed I was implying otherwise!

 

[WriteLady]

My favorite Rice book is "Feast of all Saints" but the vampire writing finesse of language is a thing of beauty.

I don't usually go for horror or what ever Midnight Mass is supposed to be. I had no idea it would take the turn it did and it creeped me out. I haven't finished it and may not.