The Midnight Club

I loved the setup! It's the right amount of grim (and not too over the top horror set ups that we generally see). I also loved the concept of midnight club - stories within the story.

I was hooked to the series for the first 2-3 episodes. Post that it just becomes confusing.

Here are my problems:

• The midnight club stories don't relate to the overall plot. Yeah, they have tried to include symbolism in it via connecting with the lives of main characters but it doesn't come off that well.

• The horror post 4-5 episodes just diminishes and the stories around love and friendship takes over (which is fine but this is supposed to be a good horror series so please!)

• Some characters are very irritating including the main one. You stop liking her as the episodes progress.

• The ending is blah!

Not a bad series, some creepy "ghost" moments, but don't buy its boast of "most jump scares in a single episode" (that being the first episode, where I actually found myself saying, "oh, enough already"... my first legitimate jump wasn't until episode 3 or 4, and even that was mild.) Some of the stories the characters tell at their club meetings are good enough. And while their personal stories and issues lend themselves to some touching moments, the series is held back by its highly implausible premise and plot holes (terminally ill kids spending their last months living in a dorm where parents only show up once-a-whatever on Family Day, a grand total of two adults in the entire hospice, neither of whom apparently supervising or checking in on these medically fragile teens at night. A hospice where a teen is left to die in a deserted ward completely alone. And where on Earth are these kids getting bottles of wine every night?) Who knows, maybe too much eye-rolling made me miss all those jump-scares, but after five episodes, I'm passing on the rest.

I have enjoyed most of Flannagan's work with the Midnight Mass likely being his best offering to date. After watching this show, my opinion hasn't changed. While far from perfect, Flannagan's work genreally posses a fair bit of creativity when it comes to defining ghosts and horrors. His biggest weakness seems to be able to definitely conclude the stories that often borders onto theatrical levels of expositions. Still, in most cases the main story is concluded to a satisfying degree regardless of the expositions. Things have gotten better overtime and I was interested to see if he finally figured out how to make a final conclusion to a tale without the theatrics.

Unfortunately, The Midnnight Club is likely the weakest offering and lest conclusive the shows to date. With an interesting premise dealing with terminally ill patients dealing with death, this show works somewhat like an Anthology with short stories building up to a greater encapsulating mystery. Unfortunately, in this case, the show rarely rises to any sort of occasion and we are instead left with mind-numbingly amateurish short stories for ten episodes with just bookending of a greater horror that never convalescences into anything meaningful. I suppose it makes sense in context that the stories are told by normal teenagers and not established authors and I guess the dissatisfaction emulates the disappointment of a life barely lived.

Subverting expectations can be tricky and the replacement has to even more interesting or about the same. Failing that you are bound to alienate your staple fans and possible newcomers. This is a gross misstep in an otherwise a pretty positive track for Flannagan. I suppose the warning signs were there when Netflix suddenly put more focus on the advertising and the first story is a riff on jump scares. I suppose Anya claiming herself to be a tougher audience was just bravado and nothing more.

I will wait and see what the reviews are for the house of the Usher as I am not interested in wasting my time on halfbaked originals.

If you aren't familiar with Christopher Pike books, this won't be a hit for you. It's unfortunate that they tried to make it a teen horror, as Pike's books aren't scary. I'm not upset with the changes to The Midnight Club book, as there is no way they could have made a series from that. Again nothing scary. It was a book about dying teens who told each other stories at midnight. There was no over arching mystery involved. So the parts about the symbol and the patient who was cured are all new for this series.

What I do like about this is that there have been no good film adaptations of Pike's books. At least here were get snippets in the short stories the characters tell.

If you are looking for something more along the lines of Hill House or Midnight Mass, this isn't it. This is more like a more mature version of Are You Afraid of the Dark. For me, that's not a bad thing.

People go into hospice as a last resort, usually when nothing more can be done medically snd/or when they cannit care for themselves, meds are stopped and people die in comfort. This show has a bunch of kids in a hospice but they all look healthy, act healthy, can move around freely and can care for themselves, and they claim to be on meds but we never see any plus a real hospice stops treatments and uses pain releivers, why are they really there, it makes no sense. This is more like a dorm and kids are up at all hours, sneaking around, snooping, and seem to have no ditection. None are exhibiting sickness or weaknrss...in real life they would not be in hospice.