Midnight Mass Review

It's been a while since I reviewed something on this page, but Midnight Mass deserves to be brought to as many people as possible. I found the show to be an incredible peak into natural faith imbued with supernatural horror, and I found myself enamored by its complex views of fundamentalism, rationalism, and the intersection of faith and reason. I'll discuss more of the philosophy behind the show in a different post; this one will be focused on the purely cinematic aspects of the Netflix miniseries.

Midnight Mass opens with music over a grisly scene; a young Riley Flynn has just crashed his car into a young woman's vehicle, eyes red from inebriation. Just as the paramedics call the victim dead on the side of the road, a lightly injured Riley begins saying a prayer reflexively, and is asked by another paramedic why God always takes the kids and not the drunk people in an accident. Of course, Riley suffers justice by having to pay a small fortune to the family of the deceased, and serves four years in prison, where he's continuously haunted by the guilt of his horrific incident. We find Riley, four years later and having been released on parole, returning to his home of Crockett Island, population 127, with no money and no purpose. He's forced to live with his parents. His mother, absent-minded and full of love for her children, welcomes him with open arms. His brother is uneasy but shares a kinship of blood unbroken by their years apart. His father is the most abrasive towards him, and when Riley mentions he won't be going to church anymore, his father demands his presence, saying it's a condition of his parole. At church, there's a new Father in town, Father Paul Hill, and with his energy there comes a shift in the island's fortunes. Miracles come to the old community, but mysteries come along with them, and while the island tries to grapple with what's happening to it, a dark force seeks to take advantage of the chaos.

The vision of writer and director Mike Flanagan is clear from the first few scenes. The show's color theme is dull, washed, and unsaturated, reflecting the tiredness of the sleepy old fishing town, whose population has been dwindling since an oil spill destroyed many people's livelihoods. The wardrobe fits within this image as well, with almost every resident wearing drab colors, baggy sweaters and cardigans, as well as being in a state bordering on the unkempt. The only splashes of color are shown in church, with the Father's chasubles, which centralize even the imagery of the show in the ecclesiastic. There are long shots which allow the dialogue to feel grounded and real, and though there are strange, unnatural moments within the dialogue, they're so far apart that they add just a touch of eeriness to an otherwise realistic script. Scenes are often imbedded with foreshadowing and subtext which becomes clear on a second watch-through. The town's design feels weathered and old, just one step from falling into ruin.

The show is acted extremely well; long shots can only showcase the grounded nature of the dialogue if it is delivered by competent actors, and this show is chock full of talent. Zach Gilford shines as Riley Flynn. His character thinks himself purposeless, bordering on the edge of nihilism as his faith has failed him when he needed it the most. However, Gilford's performance doesn't depict the classic mopey, sulky atheist most shows and movies insist upon giving us. Instead, he's resigned to his fate but still has that strain of righteousness burning in him, telling him that he needs to keep going. He's helped by Erin Greene, portrayed by Kate Siegal, who creates a charming and complicated mix of cynical humor, turbulent past, and necessary piety for her character. Rahul Kohli is the town sheriff, and his outsider perspective, rooted in his difference of faith, lends his character clarity in the face of strife and hardship when others are celebratory. The final two performances I'll highlight are Hamish Linklater as Father Paul and Samantha Sloyan as Bev Keene. Linklater has the charisma and power of being a priest with an ethereal presence when he steps in the church, and Sloyan nails the grating righteousness of her character, being both an incredibly kind and insufferable person at times.

Plot-wise, this show's strength is in its slow burn. It heats up with every episode, and by the end it's practically flying, but all the twists feel earned because it seems like you spend a significant amount of time in Crockett to understand how these people work and why they make the decisions they do, and more importantly, why they trust the people they do. Neither faith nor atheism is portrayed in a perfect light in Midnight Mass. The island's faith has helped them in the past; it helped them get through the oil spill and it gives them the serenity to keep pushing through their hardships. While it does take a dark turn, it's easy to see that Flanagan didn't want to disparage those of faith whatsoever when making Midnight Mass. Rather, he wanted to highlight how and why faith can turn ugly. Contrarily, Riley's atheism makes him one of the only purely rational actors in the town. However, it means he's also susceptible to the kind of crushing purposelessness which would have killed the fisherman who stayed in Crockett Island after the oil spill. His atheism is not portrayed as more righteous than Catholicism. In fact, after a tragedy occurs in the later episodes, Riley reveals the weakness of his moral character as being one who is still susceptible to ideology, despite proclaiming he'd left that life behind him.

I understand that Mike Flanagan has made a few other scary shows, namely The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, and that the cast of Midnight Mass is found across his works. If that's the case, Midnight Mass gives me ample reason to watch everything Flanagan has put on screen. It's just that good. Gritty, dark, with moments of levity and hope but also moments of terrifying struggle and nihilism. I remember I used to do some sort of grading systems on this page, but given that this review is the first (hopefully) of a new wave of TV, book, and film criticism, I'll start a new chapter by simply saying: I highly recommend Midnight Mass to anyone looking to challenge their conceptions of faith with a well-rounded story which feels real even though it dips its toes into the supernatural.