Now watching episode 3, I got through the endless Neil Diamond dance and pray montage. Now I’m enduring Leeza’s endless monologue to drunk Joe. Tighten your shit up, Flanagan!
I wondered about the Neil Diamond connection. Must be a story there.
Overall I think the music selection has been very good. Mike the Altar Boy knows his hymns.
Just watched the 4th episode, and damn.
Yeah. the foreshadowing was fantastic! mind blown that that happened
such good foreshadowing (the whole show, really). I’m sure for some it’s too heavy handed, but it works for me
Okay, good. I’ll be watching #4 later tonight and this show could use some damn.
EDIT: It’s an hour and ten minutes long??
EDIT #2 (an hour and ten minutes later): Damn.
I decided to watch Flanagan’s Absentia before I started as I had never seen it. Then I watched the first three episodes and then decided to watch his movie Ouija last night. I’d seen several of his other offerings. The quality of his work, on the whole, seems better than many. It’s consistently entertaining and less predictable than much in the genre.
Episode #4 had at least a couple more of those endless f*cking monologues. I find it so aggravating and self-indulgent, I kept having to pause the scene and do something else for a bit just to get past my frustration. I agree with Katie Rife’s AV Club review:
As far back as Hill House , Flanagan has had a tendency to write florid speeches where simple dialogue would do, a bad habit that goes completely unchecked in Midnight Mass . It makes sense for a priest to be bombastic at the pulpit, but when a minor character monologues for a minute and a half before delivering the one piece of information she’s brought to the narrative, something is out of balance.
In trying to cram so many ideas into Midnight Mass, Flanagan has left himself with a jumble of mixed metaphors and overwritten soliloquies with not enough terror to cancel them out. Religion addresses some of the scariest things a human being can contemplate—namely, the unknowable void that awaits us after we die. And this fear is palpable in Midnight Mass. So why does it also feel like being a kid again, counting the beams in the church ceiling as a preacher drones on in the background?
Still, I’m a bit of a sucker for the Stephen King-ish-ness of it all so it’s not all bad.
Only an hour and ten minutes? You managed not to just launch right into #5?
I liked some of the long dialog in the show.
Not everything needs to blurted out in tweet form.
I actually like the monologues/extended dialogs (they aren’t strictly monologues, and work with the characters and the ideas they are grappling with). They are well done, and do a good job of exploring some of the themes of the series. Not everything needs to be bite-sized, quick cuts and 86 the exposition.
YMMV, of course. It’s definitely not for everyone, but I find it refreshing sometimes, when done well.
Though I would have liked a look at which of Paul Hill’s sermons/sermonizing were directly influenced by the ‘other’. On the other hand, there may have been a cue for the audience which I missed. Maybe the shouting portions?
Ouija was him? May need to check that out - it had piqued my interest previously without that knowledge.
Specifically the second movie. The first is garbage.
Edit: Oclus is another good movie he did.
I don’t have a problem with any of the extended speeches or conversations except the final one by Kate Siegel. Which just felt unnecessary and poorly timed. Still, compared to the issues his other series have had wrapping up, that’s a minor misstep.
Talking about the Second Ouija?
Yah. Ouja: Origin of Evil is the sequel by Flanagan. The first movie is hot pg13 trash.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have shorthanded it. I’d blanked out the first movie and that’s probably why I had not watched the sequel before now. He also did Hush, which I enjoyed AND the Gerald’s Game limited series.
I also like Oculus as mentioned above. He’s solid.
Damn, I want all that but in Strong Bad’s voice.
Heh, I’m a one episode per day kind of guy. Maybe two a day if it’s a 20-30 minute show but even that is rare. I savor rather than feast!
Oh, jeez, c’mon. “Tweet form” is obviously not the only alternative here. This isn’t how people talk. I’d prefer something more natural to balance out the supernatural. The soliloquies feel stagey and unrealistic to me.
Besides, I think most of us are here for the creepy faces in windows, glowing eyes in the dark, etc, etc. I feel like this show is surprisingly light on that kind of horror content.
At least there was one good monologue scene… Riley’s thoughts about what he thinks will happen when he dies was really good. That one didn’t make me pause the show and pace angrily around the room like Leeza’s and Erin’s monologues did.