The Midnight Club
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Its a series about terminally ill young adults, as ripe for tear-jerking as Flanagans other shows.
But its also more consciously about thewritingof horror stories; about what makes them scary.
Shes a bookworm and rule follower, but shes excited to break out of her comfort zone upon graduation.
She and her friend Lauren are already scoping out college parties.
A place where it’s possible for you to both rant for hours about your favorite sci-fiandmeet cute boys?
She could make it another year, but likely not much longer than that.
Its clear that something about Brightcliffe is strange and potentially dangerous from that first Yahoo!
search; Ilonka is already experiencing unsettling visions and deja vu.
To us, everything looks like a giant blinking sign warning her to turn back now.
But Ilonka isnt put off.
If the science isnt there yet to save her, why not try magic?
Brightcliffe isnt about battles; its about permission to leave the battlefield, she tells Ilonka and Tim.
We arent about a fight, and it certainly isnt losing a battle.
Every living day here is a win.
Theres Spence (five months), the friendly guy who gives her the tour.
She follows her to the library, where the gang is meeting up to tell scary stories.
This is the titular Midnight Club: a group established before any of these eight were even at Brightcliffe.
On a meta level,The Midnight Clubseems to be Flanagans way of commenting on horror tropes.
But the atmosphere dissipates quickly when the dreamy repetition of one girls Are you lost?
turns into a nonstop series of jump scares, with her screaming face appearing wherever Ren turns.
(The second sentence on his Wikipedia page even identifies a lack of reliance on jump scares.)
Thats not scary; its just startling.
And its lazy as fuck.
(Did you just fucking black-cat scare us?
You do that first, not at the end.)
The second story of the night belongs to Ilonka, who is required to share something for initiation.
It aint easy, you know?
Scaring someone whos already been given the worst news theyll ever get.
Thats how Anya explains the appeal of the Midnight Club to Ilonka.
But on a deeper level, it works as a statement of purpose forThe Midnight Club.
The answer, of course, is that you remind us there are worse things than death.
Perhaps Julia Jayne found that out herself.
Spence hilariously explains, We try not to do that here.
Its a little masturbatory.
Its almost like a reassurance that the Midnight Club stories wont usually be cut-and-dried character memoirs.
