Netflix: The Midnight Club is everything we expect (and love) about Mike Flanagan

Mike Flanagan fans (Fanagans?) have been excited about The Midnight Club ever since we heard it was coming to Netflix as a 10-episode series. Based on Christopher Pike’s 1994 young adult novel, the series is presented in true Flanagan fashion.

The Haunting of Bly Manor was mostly taken from Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw, but it also included story elements from James’s other works, and The Midnight Club is handled in a similar way.

The Midnight Club are a group of terminally ill patients living at Brightcliffe, a hospice for young adults. They secretly meet each night at midnight and exchange spooky stories, talk about their fears and hopes, drink a little wine…all without the knowledge of the dedicated Dr. Stanton and her kind nurse practitioner Mark.

Ilonka (Iman Benson) is the newest member of the club. She is a smart, determined teen with a loving foster Dad, and instead of attending college as she planned, she is fighting cancer. She chooses the hospice after doing online research, because she found stories of terminal patients actually leaving the facility cured of their illnesses.

Her roommate is the snarky, angry Anya (Ruth Codd), an Irish girl confined to a wheelchair. As one might expect, most of her anger is due to her illness and her helplessness to fight off her own impending death. Although she makes fun of Ilonka’s fondness for “healing” teas, you can see that deep inside, she really wants to believe that something that simple could be a cure.

Benson and Codd are both outstanding in The Midnight Club

Rounding out the club members are Kevin (Igby Rigney), Spence (Chris Sumpter), Natsuki (Aya Furukawa), Sandra (Annarah Cymone), Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota) and Cheri (Adia). Each of the characters has their own quirks, and each of them is compelling and interesting; something we have come to expect from Mike Flanagan’s characters.

There are, of course adults in the picture as well. Heather Langenkamp (who played Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street) is Dr. Georgina Stanton, who founded Brightcliffe. It’s a joy to see Langenkamp on screen again, especially in multiple roles, because she also plays a completely different kind of character in a story shared by Anya.

Zach Gilford (Midnight Mass) appears as Mark, and Samantha Sloyan (who played the hateful Bev in Midnight Mass) is Shasta, a woman living on the edge of Brightcliffe’s property. That’s right, this is another cast partly built of actors who have appeared in other Flanagan projects.

There is not a weak link among the actors appearing in The Midnight Club, and I enjoyed getting to know each of them, even when they broke my heart. Because, terminally ill young people, you know? They are dealing with emotions and feelings that can barely be handled by adults, let alone teenagers.

Remember when I said The Midnight Club was set up in a manner similar to The Haunting of Bly Manor? Well, the stories told by the teens are each based on other books by Christopher Pike. So, just as Bly Manor was a blend of several stories by one author, so is The Midnight Club.

The series has everything I personally love about Flanagan projects: a dark storyline, well-developed characters, smart and relatable dialogue and tons of heart. As part of the creative process, Flanagan consulted with oncologists, hospice workers, and even GLAAD, which was a smart move. One of the characters has AIDS, and he wanted to make sure their storyline, as well as each of the others, was handled sensitively and accurately.

Of course, along with the emotional storylines come some creepiness, some twists and turns and some jump scares…a LOT of jump scares are contained in the story featured in episode one, The Final Chapter. You will get no spoilers from me right now, those will have to wait for the recaps!

People who loved The Haunting of Hill House tend to compare all of Flanagan’s other series to that one, which was the first. But, it’s an especially hard comparison this time around, because The Midnight Club deals with characters who are almost all teenagers. I personally loved it, and I think most fans of Hill House will love it as well.

Have you started bingeing The Midnight Club? Tell us what you think about it in the comments section!