MIDNIGHT MASS Season 1 (September 2021)

MIDNIGHT MASS Season 1

(September 2021)

“But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.”

--Genesis 39:21

Crockett Island (pop. 127) is the home Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) finds himself returning to after years of incarceration, just in time to bear witness to mysteries and miracles.

That, in a nutshell, is Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix offering, Midnight Mass, which is, among other things, a tale of faith and addiction, of community and mortality, of belief (and the selective interpretation of scripture) as a weapon and a means of manipulation and justification.

“The people on this island… We used to be hundreds. Now, we’re just dozens.

“This isn’t a community anymore, honey. It’s a ghost.”

One of the strengths of Midnight Mass is its depiction of a group of disparate individuals united only in their faith (though there are, naturally, a number of outliers in that respect) and the turmoil of daily existence in an economically devastated community struggling to stay alive.

And that particular strength is down to some excellent writing from Flanagan and company, coupled with some powerful performances from the cast, which includes some past collaborators like wife Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas, Starry Eyes’ Alex Essoe, The X-Files’ Annabeth Gish, and BSG’s Michael Trucco*.

And while Gilford is probably best known for Friday Night Lights, he’s been ‘round these parts before, thanks to Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter (part of the ¡Qué horror! 2008 rundown).

Oh! And Groove’s Hamish Linklater (seen more recently on TV’s Legion) is here too, in a pivotal role.

I could go on and on…

“What is otherwise horrible is good because of where it’s headed.”

Yes, there are some scares here, and sure, there is some gore, but ultimately, Midnight Mass is a heart-wrenching tale told through the lens of one of supernatural horror’s most enduring of fixtures, a story of yearning and loss and the struggle to find meaning and a sense of understanding and peace in an imperfect and often brutal world.

And believe me, it’s a final assessment that comes as a complete (albeit very welcome) surprise.

More so than a “horror” story, it’s an achingly beautiful piece of work, this.

Partake of its bounty… and be not afraid…

“I mean, what’s a little crazy between friends, right?”

* Gish appeared in Before I Wake and The Haunting of Hill House, while Trucco was in Hush, in which he acted alongside Siegel and Midnight Mass’ Bev Keane, Samantha Sloyan.

And Essoe was in Doctor Sleep, as well as The Haunting of Bly Manor (more on that below).

Yup, Flanagan does enjoy working with the same stable of performers, doesn’t he?

Parting Shot:

For a number of reasons, I haven’t had the opportunity to take in Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor (despite the fact that I thought very highly of The Haunting of Hill House).

But who knows?

Maybe I’ll finally step through Bly Manor’s door soon…

Halloween’s just around the corner, after all…

(Midnight Mass OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

13 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[12 of 13]

PET SEMATARY

(March 2019)

“There are places in this world... that are older than either of us. Places that a rational doctor brain like yours will never understand.

“Nobody knows what that place is, what happens in that stony ground.

“But the soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis.”

For the record, I’ve never read the original Stephen King novel.

My only exposure to a complete narrative of Pet Sematary was the 1989 film adaptation directed by Mary Lambert.

At least, until now.

Now that I’ve also been exposed to the new adaptation from Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, who broke onto the ¡Qué horror! 2015 main list with Starry Eyes. (While I would have probably checked out a Pet Sematary remake anyway, based on my familiarity with the 1989 film, Kölsch and Widmyer’s presence at the director’s chair(s) sealed the deal.)

Clearly, there are marked deviations from Lambert’s version, though given that, again, I’ve never read the novel, maybe these deviations bring the narrative closer to the original source material. (I was always under the impression that Lambert’s adaptation made changes to the original text, as is par for the course with any adaptation, really.)

 

All I know is, with death as a major theme and reality of Pet Sematary, it’s a bleakly harsh vision of a parent’s perhaps vain struggle to protect a child from the brutal truths of existence.

And another thing… what I am sure I miss from Mary Lambert’s adaptation?

The original Ramones title track.

Sorry, Starcrawler…

“Yeah, they knew the power of that place. They felt its pull.

“They came to believe that those woods belonged to something else. That the ground was bad.”

(Pet Sematary OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

13 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[3 of 13]
The Danse Macabre Slot

So yes, since both these films have dance as a central narrative element, they're sharing a slot...
 

CLIMAX

(May 2018)

Gaspar Noé’s* self-described "catastrophe movie with dancers," Climax is an interesting entry in the “Cinematic Experience as Endurance Test” horror movie category.

In it, we witness a group of dancers have the Worst. Night. Ever. thanks to an external trigger that shall remain unidentified here.

The fact that the trigger is a very real and possible occurrence also makes Climax the kind of horror film that doesn’t need ghosts or demons or vampires or masked slashers or (Heaven forbid) zombies to make its case, but instead, is a chillingly disturbing example of Sartre’s observation "L'enfer, c'est les autres!" (“Hell is other people!”).

Hell is also a gradual, hypnotic, dizzying, alluringly repulsive descent into chaos.

But while all of the above may be true, it must also be pointed out that Hell has a slammin’ soundtrack!

[Climax is] all about people creating something together, and failing in the second half. It’s like the story of the Tower of Babel. Mankind can create big things. And then with the influence of alcohol, or some accident, everything falls.

--Gaspar Noé

* Noé has pointed to titles like ‘70’s disaster films The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, as well as David Cronenberg’s Shivers as some of the inspiration that fueled Climax.

SUSPIRIA

(September 2018)

"They are professional performers. Illusion is their craft.”

The best word I can come up with for Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (billed as “Six Acts and an Epilogue Set in Divided Berlin”), is reimagining.

While the opening credits tell us that the script by David Kajganich is still “Based on the Original Screenplay by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi,” this Suspiria takes the bare narrative bones of a young American accepted to a dance academy that hides a sinister secret, and lushly fleshes it out, in both theme and character, giving us something at once familiar, and yet bracingly, beguilingly new.

Or, to use the appropriate metaphor, it’s generally the same dance, but it’s set to a different tempo, so it’s got a different rhythm, and it boasts some new, brazenly daring choreography.

“When you dance the dance of another, you make yourself in the image of its creator. You empty yourself, so that her work can live within you.

“Do you understand?”

Some of those new steps are immediately introduced to us.

Even before Susanna Bannion of Ohio (Dakota Johnson) is welcomed into the Helena Markos Tanzgruppe, we meet Josef Klemperer (“Lutz Ebersdorf”**), psychiatrist to Chloë Grace Moretz’s Patricia Hingle (a name that should ring some bells from the original).

And while Argento bound himself largely to the dark fairy tale setting of the Tanz Academie, Guadagnino and Kajganich choose to frame the action against historical events in a “Divided Berlin,” tossing politics (including sexual), societal upheaval, and the long, twisted shadow of the Holocaust into this witches’ brew.

With a full hour more running time than the original, this Suspiria uses that additional time masterfully so motivations come more clearly into focus, and dance becomes even more pivotal and central to the narrative.

“Movement is never mute. It is a language. It’s a series of energetic shapes written in the air like words forming sentences.

“Like poems.

“Like prayers.”

Dance as magick.

Movement as vector for intent and desire, unleashing power more potentially destructive than bombs.

These come forcefully to the surface in this reimagining, as does Argento’s Three Mothers mythology.

As Klemperer recounts:

“Patricia wrote about ‘Three Mothers,’ lost in time, predating all Christian invention. Pre-God. Pre-Devil.

“Mother Tenebrarum, Mother Lachrymarum, and Mother Suspiriorum.

“Darkness, Tears, and Sighs.”

We may not be treated to the added layer of their three Houses just yet, but the basic mythological foundation is here for our inspection.

All these, and more, all discrete steps in this shadowy dance, which builds steadily, crescendoing in a completely batsh!t Grand Guignol finale, before segueing into a surprisingly moving Epilogue.

(Plus, Argento’s Suzy Bannion, Jessica Harper, makes a crucial appearance!)

While it’s safe to say that this was clearly another very serious instance of “Manage Your Expectations, Space Monkey,” I am relieved to announce that this is a dance I was very glad to have witnessed.

“You can give someone your delusion, Sara. That’s religion.”

** I could go on about the whole Tilda Swinton of it all (and she is amazing here, as always), but that would just detract from the whole, so let’s just leave that where it is, and simply bathe in the witchy glow of this powerful and potent “reimagining” without those added distractions.

Parting Shot: Reviews for Argento’s original “Three Mothers” trilogy can be found here, here, and here.

Given my opinions of Inferno and La Terza Madre, I honestly wouldn’t mind some more reimaginings of this type.

Parting Shot 2: Kajganich also wrote the script for The Invasion (review here), but that was butchered thanks to studio/test audience interference, so we’re not holding that against him.

He also co-wrote the script for the Pet Sematary remake, from Starry Eyes’ Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer. (Definitely another case of “Manage Your Expectations, Space Monkey.”)

(Climax & Suspiria OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #21

PET SEMATARY

(March 2019)

“There are places in this world... that are older than either of us. Places that a rational doctor brain like yours will never understand.

“Nobody knows what that place is, what happens in that stony ground.

“But the soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis.”

For the record, I’ve never read the original Stephen King novel.

My only exposure to a complete narrative of Pet Sematary was the 1989 film adaptation directed by Mary Lambert.

At least, until now.

Now that I’ve also been exposed to the new adaptation from Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, who broke onto the ¡Qué horror! 2015 main list with Starry Eyes. (While I would have probably checked out a Pet Sematary remake anyway, based on my familiarity with the 1989 film, Kölsch and Widmyer’s presence at the director’s chair(s) sealed the deal.)

Clearly, there are marked deviations from Lambert’s version, though given that, again, I’ve never read the novel, maybe these deviations bring the narrative closer to the original source material. (I was always under the impression that Lambert’s adaptation made changes to the original text, as is par for the course with any adaptation, really.)

 

All I know is, with death as a major theme and reality of Pet Sematary, it’s a bleakly harsh vision of a parent’s perhaps vain struggle to protect a child from the brutal truths of existence.

And another thing… what I am sure I miss from Mary Lambert’s adaptation?

The original Ramones title track.

Sorry, Starcrawler…

“Yeah, they knew the power of that place. They felt its pull.

“They came to believe that those woods belonged to something else. That the ground was bad.”

(Pet Sematary OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #10

SUSPIRIA

(September 2018)

"They are professional performers. Illusion is their craft.”

The best word I can come up with for Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (billed as “Six Acts and an Epilogue Set in Divided Berlin”), is reimagining.

While the opening credits tell us that the script by David Kajganich is still “Based on the Original Screenplay by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi,” this Suspiria takes the bare narrative bones of a young American accepted to a dance academy that hides a sinister secret, and lushly fleshes it out, in both theme and character, giving us something at once familiar, and yet bracingly, beguilingly new.

Or, to use the appropriate metaphor, it’s generally the same dance, but it’s set to a different tempo, so it’s got a different rhythm, and it boasts some new, brazenly daring choreography.

“When you dance the dance of another, you make yourself in the image of its creator. You empty yourself, so that her work can live within you.

“Do you understand?”

Some of those new steps are immediately introduced to us.

Even before Susanna Bannion of Ohio (Dakota Johnson) is welcomed into the Helena Markos Tanzgruppe, we meet Josef Klemperer (“Lutz Ebersdorf”*), psychiatrist to Chloë Grace Moretz’s Patricia Hingle (a name that should ring some bells from the original).

And while Argento bound himself largely to the dark fairy tale setting of the Tanz Academie, Guadagnino and Kajganich choose to frame the action against historical events in a “Divided Berlin,” tossing politics (including sexual), societal upheaval, and the long, twisted shadow of the Holocaust into this witches’ brew.

With a full hour more running time than the original, this Suspiria uses that additional time masterfully so motivations come more clearly into focus, and dance becomes even more pivotal and central to the narrative.

“Movement is never mute. It is a language. It’s a series of energetic shapes written in the air like words forming sentences.

“Like poems.

“Like prayers.”

Dance as magick.

Movement as vector for intent and desire, unleashing power more potentially destructive than bombs.

These come forcefully to the surface in this reimagining, as does Argento’s Three Mothers mythology.

As Klemperer recounts:

“Patricia wrote about ‘Three Mothers,’ lost in time, predating all Christian invention. Pre-God. Pre-Devil.

“Mother Tenebrarum, Mother Lachrymarum, and Mother Suspiriorum.

“Darkness, Tears, and Sighs.”

We may not be treated to the added layer of their three Houses just yet, but the basic mythological foundation is here for our inspection.

All these, and more, all discrete steps in this shadowy dance, which builds steadily, crescendoing in a completely batsh!t Grand Guignol finale, before segueing into a surprisingly moving Epilogue.

(Plus, Argento’s Suzy Bannion, Jessica Harper, makes a crucial appearance!)

While it’s safe to say that this was clearly another very serious instance of “Manage Your Expectations, Space Monkey,” I am relieved to announce that this is a dance I was very glad to have witnessed.

“You can give someone your delusion, Sara. That’s religion.”

* I could go on about the whole Tilda Swinton of it all (and she is amazing here, as always), but that would just detract from the whole, so let’s just leave that where it is, and simply bathe in the witchy glow of this powerful and potent “reimagining” without those added distractions.

Parting Shot: Reviews for Argento’s original “Three Mothers” trilogy can be found here, here, and here.

Given my opinions of Inferno and La Terza Madre, I honestly wouldn’t mind some more reimaginings of this type.

Parting Shot 2: Kajganich also wrote the script for The Invasion (review here), but that was butchered thanks to studio/test audience interference, so we’re not holding that against him.

He also co-wrote the script for the upcoming Pet Sematary remake, from Starry Eyes’ Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that one. (Definitely another case of “Manage Your Expectations, Space Monkey.”)

(Suspiria OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)