The Midnight Club hit Netflix earlier this month, and I finally made my way through the 10-episode first season this weekend.
This is another Mike Flanagan creation, so I had high hopes coming in. I’m a big fan of the Salem, MA-born filmmaker, who’s had quite the run creating scares for Netflix in recent years. 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House was a bit of an instant classic. And while 2021’s Midnight Mass got some flack from both horror fans and critics for being too slow-moving and dialogue-driven, I enjoyed its mashup of vampire lore and historical Christian tropes. Hell, I loved Hush and Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, too. So I guess I’m a bit of a Flanagan fanboy. Which makes sense, because Flanagan is a Stephen King fanboy and so am I.
The Midnight Club is adapted from Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel. The series follows eight young people who are all terminally ill patients at Brightcliffe Hospice Care for Teenagers. Each night at midnight, the teens meet in the Brightcliffe library to tell each other spooky stories. Before long, the spooks aren’t just in the stories. Brightcliffe has a somewhat sinister history. Ghosts and shadows are seen and not seen. Secret rooms are discovered. There are jump scares galore. And while the young cast of The Midnight Club are an absolute blast to watch, the real star of the show is the music.
The Midnight Club Was Good, and The Music Was Great
Again, the book was written in 1994. So Flanagan and his creative team use a mid-90s setting for their Netflix adaptation. That gave them quite a few opportunities to work some mid-90s alt-rock classics into scenes, and they did. It was reminiscent of Fear Street on Netflix last summer. I took notes as the series unfolded, and I’ve taken those musical moments and made a pretty killer ’90s playlist for you to spin through. So do that, then go watch the show. It’s a good one.