Mise éjfélkor

Midnight Mass will reward patient viewers, Impatient viewers probably shouldn’t even try it, because the pace is really slow – at least for the first four episodes even I would have welcomed some shortening. However, if you are in the mood to listen to the dialogues (and have the brain capacity to understand them), there are some fascinating aspects of fitting vampire mythology into biblical narrative. The series beautifully demonstrates how fanatical religious faith can misinterpret absolutely anything to fit its worldview. The funny icing on the cake are some Czech reactions to the series, which, from a hilariously militant atheist position, label it as religious propaganda. This is so blatantly incomprehensible that the writers of such rants should never watch anything more challenging than ten-second videos on TikTok. That said, Mike Flanagan had set the bar too high for me with some of his previous pieces, so I'm not fully thrilled with Midnight Mass. The first episodes really drag quite a bit, with a few minutes at the end that always pull them out of the average. From about halfway through it goes nicely, but in the last episode I didn't like the turn of one character, and I don’t think the final catharsis wasn't nearly as strong as it should have been given how much time had been dedicated to the characters beforehand. 75 % (2021.10.02)

Flanagan, give me back my god damn time you motherf*cker! Flanagan's religious borefest at its most repulsive. A fanatic, extremely slow and unentertaining religious drama where the only horror is watching this show without harm. I'd play this to captured terrorists as a torture device instead of electric shocks. If I had known in advance what depravity I was going to be subjected to, I would have eaten a Bible without hesitation. After the first episode, you think okay, so far it's going strong, but by the fifth episode you start to think someone forgot to fill up the tank and they never meant to get really going. There's a bunch of unlikeable random ordinary characters and nobody is interesting. They completely cold characters and I didn't care about the fate of any of them, everyone is dealing with horribly uninteresting adult stuff like trauma, alcohol problems, abortion, God is the best and praise him, which is way more interesting than Vampire carnage, right? If only it had at least worked as a Wicker Man style mysterious and strange community on an island, but no Flanagan goes for his heartfelt drama in endless and never ending dialogue, and I'm off to enjoy the similarly paced but totally in every way more distinctive and better Chapelwaite. Here there is priest preaching during mass for perhaps ten minutes in each episode, the music is horrible and I'm getting physically nauseous (I was secretly remembering the Malignant soundtrack!), it's full of monologues and dialogues where the characters are either sitting in a church, on a boat, in alcohol therapy or on a couch, and of course the horror is nowhere to be found. Scares? Nonexistent. Atmosphere? Where? Suspense only in church. Gore only in fantasy. Action five minutes at the end of each episode and sometimes not even that. Well, that's what I ordered. The worst spent seven hours in at least five years. Evangelical martyrdom! This shouldn't have been greenlit. An experience that made me go grey and physically a great test of patience and self-control. I may have a problem with Flanagan, his directing style has never appealed to me and I didn't enjoy his much lauded The Haunting of Hill House either, but that at least had decent atmosphere and solid haunted attractions, which unfortunately are here. I was not at all, but not at all entertained by this ugliness. Story 3/5, Action 1/5, Humour 0/5, Violence 1/5, Fun 0/5 Music 1/5, Visuals 3/5, Atmosphere 2/5, Suspense 2/5, Emotion 1/5, Actors 3/5. 2/10. (2021.09.25)

This is probably the best thing that King never wrote, although it closely resembles at least one of his works. Midnight Mass is more of a drama than a horror series and is aimed mainly at patient audiences, who are going to appreciate the thought-provoking dialogues and rich characterization more than any significant jump scares, as there is not much of that in this show. (2021.11.08)