I love Mike Flanagan and his work. I love his movies for example ‘Doctor Sleep’ and his tv series like ‘Haunting of Hill House’ and ‘Midnight Mass’ were epic although ‘Haunting of Bly Manor’ did not work that well for me. Now, it was time for me to check out his latest series in ten episodes order.
This series is based on works of Christopher Pike and his novels and is set in 1990s with a group of kids who live in hospitium called Brightcliffe. All of the main characters in this series are teenagers, young people terminally ill with cancer and they meet at midnight to tell their scary stories to one another and The Midnight Club is in fact a support group of friends telling stories and sharing their hopes, scares of death, toasting to ones who have passed away and so on. But, Brightcliffe has its dark secrets being a base for the sinister cult back in the sixties and also their host, doctor Stanton(played by horror legend Heather Langenkamp) has her private secrets and is pretty shady character. Main girl Ilonka, her roommate and all others fight for their lives, contemplate death and try to survive and uncover the secrets within their walls.
This is in short storyline of the series with many shortcomings. This time, Flanagan deals with death, similar to ‘Midnight Mass’ where he concentrated more on religion. This time, death is main theme. Fear of death, accepting death, making peace with yourself and the world. But, main thing is, this series is a bit boring. There are too little secrets and horror, although couple of stories Midnight Club tell to each other are really good, I can not say that the series could be shorter with less episodes. Flanagan’s series all were long in duration of episodes, but they had greatly written characters and what is more important superb written dialogues although long, they kept you tied to the screen. This time it is not the case. Too little dialogues and quality is less than in previous series. What I like about it is, that both Pike and Flanagan deal with their characters as adults not children and this is not a series for kids. Characters suffer, die and some of the moments are real tear jerkers in couple of episodes. Ending is not complete, but leaves lots of space for continuation into second season. I hope that, if they will make second season, the quality of the story and screenplay rises. The ending of this one was a bit anticlimactic.
Acting: 8/10 axes – all of the actors done their job perfectly, from young ones to ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ veteran Heather Langenkamp.
Conclusion: 6/10 axes – This is above average series but not live up to the expectations we are used to from Mike Flanagan.
Hungarian cinema is maybe small compared to some other countries, but they make great movies. 1945(2017.) is one of them. WWII has ended in Europe and Soviets have taken over Hungary making it communist marionette state like all others behind the iron curtain. Our movie is set into picturesque little village, on the outside, everything is fine and the village mayor, also store owner prepares to marry his son to a girl. But, all that is spoiled when two Jews arrive by train with some wooden cases and doubts, guilt and evil come to the surface. This movie is shot in black and white technique which adds to the somehow bleak atmosphere of Hungarian vast flat country and fields with excellent photography. The story evolves around guilt, consciousness, betrayal of best friends, antisemitism which is on the rise in nowadays Hungary which becomes more and more a one man dictatorship under Orban. This is not a political movie, but has some connotations which can we as viewers relate to nowadays current state of politics. The music is fantastic, all that dark ambient droning mixed with traditional Hungarian instruments and the story is well written, ending is poetic and cool, also the cast is great, the actors are really chosen wisely. I recommend this one to all of you who watch something other than current blockbusters.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 