The Midnight Club - Mike Flanagan's YA series on Netflix

Based on Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel.

https://youtu.be/X3cCROeOQLQ

Two episodes in and feeling a little bored. Loved Midnight Mass, which had me hoping he was on a positive trajectory, but this is like Bly Manor all over again.

We’re about half way through so far. It isn’t terrible, but it isn’t his best work either. It for sure suffers under the weight of crap that has been added to the book it was sourced from. The juxtaposition of the anthology series stories with the multiple layered meta plots often strikes the wrong balance. Never mind that some of those anthology stories are much stronger than others to begin with. Will be curious to revisit after we get through to the end.

Yeah I think the other thing about this is that it is very YA. The supernatural horror elements are very tame.

I watched first episode. It was ok, but I am not sure if I want to continue. I felt somewhat invested in Ilonka’s story but if majority of runtime will be some made up stories then that doesn’t interest me much.

Btw why is she named Ilonka? It is diminiutive form of fairly common czech name Ilona, but I never saw anyone named specifically “Ilonka”, in czechland, let alone US.

If Midnight Club follows the general pattern we saw in Hill House and Bly Manor, I suspect her name will be explained eventually, as the various mysteries are all revealed over the course of the season. They’ve already started to touch on it via an encounter she has with a character I assume you haven’t seen yet. (Who also has an unusual name that I assume will turn out to be significant.)

Hmmm.

Well, I finally got through it. The series was a slog for me. The actors were fine, and it was a treat to see Heather Langenkamp doing something outside of cameos in dreadfully low-budget horror movies, but this was Flanagan’s weakest work IMHO. This was even weaker than Before I Wake which at least had the good grace to be only a single movie. A couple of parts were really good, but overall this was disappointing.

And good gravy at that ending.

Yep. Finished a few nights ago and completely agree on all counts. Not worth the watch despite a promising setup.

Yep, also finished it and it was…meh. I am not interested in more seasons.

I had completely forgotten about it until Telefrog brought it up again. Not sure I want to slog through the rest. Having as low a bar as I do does not always help when the work is of a super talented person like Flanigan who just doesn’t seem to recognize what is working and what isn’t.