‘Midnight Mass’ Series Premiere Recap: The Lonely Island

“Whatever walked there, walked together.” With that sentence, writer-director-horror impresario Mike Flanagan converted The Haunting of Hill House, author Shirley Jackson’s scabrously bleak meditation on the fundamental isolation of being human, into some sort of hymn to the power of family. As an admirer of the original novel, I must confess this is where I tapped out of Flanagan’s work altogether. I just couldn’t forgive so deliberate a missing-of-the-point, no matter how much praise Ouija: Origin of Evil may have received.

So his latest Netflix project, Midnight Mass, is a bit of a hard sell, even if some of its elements—isolated island, charismatic and possibly evil priest, cat-eating vampires—are right up my alley. Can it transcend its creator’s tendency toward treacly sentimentality and let the scares do the talking?

Midnight Mass‘s debut episode (“Book I: Genesis”) mostly follows Riley Flynn, an expat from a place called Crockett Island and its isolated community. Riley falls back into its orbit after serving a prison sentence for a fatal DUI. He’s welcomed back, with varying degrees of hospitality, by his mother Annie (Kristin Lehman), his father Ed (Henry Thomas), his kid brother Warren (Igby Rigney), and his similarly repatriated (and pregnant) old friend Erin Greene (Kate Siegel). Rounding out the cast of characters are Rahul Kohli as the small-town Sheriff Hassan and Rahul Abburi as his son, Warren’s friend Ali; Louis Oliver as Warren and Ali’s bad-boy buddy Ooker; Annarah Cymone as Warren’s paraplegic crush Leeza; Michael Trucco as Leeza’s dad and the town’s mayor, Wade; Annabeth Gish as local doctor Sarah Gunning; Robert Longstreet as Joe, the town drunk; and Samantha Sloyan as the Eleanor Rigby–esque church lady, Bev Keane.

Each character is briefly sketched out through a series of introductory scenes and meet-cutes; the effect is very, very much like the opening chapters of an old Stephen King novel. Creator Mike Flanagan is no stranger to King, having directed adaptations of Gerald’s Game and the ill-advised Shining sequel Doctor Sleep; the show has received King’s ringing endorsement, which longtime King fans know is cause for concern rather than celebration.

Ah, but there’s a newcomer to town, as there tends to be in this kind of story: Father Paul Hill, a young-ish priest played by Hamish Linklater. Ostensibly in town to cover for the community’s aging pastor Monsignor Pruitt, who allegedly fell ill on a pilgrimage, he brings with him an enormous, locked chest, from which can be heard the sound of knocking from the inside. A vampire, perhaps? I sure hope so! I could go for a good “undead bloodsucker feasts on the people of a small town” story—I usually can, tbh—and the reported sightings of large flying creatures, as well as the episode-ending shoreside deaths of hundreds of stray cats that populate an outlying island, seem to indicate the presence of a new alpha predator.

One thing Midnight Mass has going for it is its portrait of a community on the brink of collapse. Cut off from the mainland and reduced to a population of just 127 people, Crockett Island is a town coasting on fumes. Though surprisingly diverse given its insularity (the sheriff is Muslim, the mayor’s wife and daughter are Black), it’s struggling to stay above water, both literally and metaphorically. Storms, oil spills, and environmental regulations that seem to apply only to the little people and not to the big corporations all threaten to strangle what’s left of the place. It’s gotten to the point where people who leave don’t even bother trying to sell their houses, opting instead to simply pack up and go. That’s the kind of detail that sticks with you.

(Brief aside: Fans of the general “horror strikes a remote, decaying island community” vibe would be well advised to seek out The Third Day, HBO’s semi-experimental folk-horror series from last year.)

Some of the show’s decisions are a bit harder to understand, particularly in the casting department. Actor Zach Gilford, who plays Riley, is only ten years younger in real life than actors Kristin Lehman and Henry Thomas, who play his parents; their age makeup, gray hair, and senior-citizen affectations are about as convincing as the kids in your high school’s production of Our Town. And the less said about the poor, obviously young soul (Alex Essoe) playing Annabeth Gish’s dementia-suffering mother from under a layer of flimsy prosthetics, the better. I’m hoping that the need to feature these characters in flashbacks—or better yet, as rejuvenated vampire versions of themselves—is the reason for these otherwise dubious decisions.

That said, some of the casting works out better. Zach Gilford’s portrayal of Riley as a man whose world has faded to gray after his lethal DUI, all prospects of purpose or happiness foreclosed to him, rings true. And Hamish Linklater does fine work as Father Paul; considerations of his sinister cargo aside, he nails that blend of contemporary conviviality and affected timelessness with which priests who are trying to make a point always seem to speak.

He’s a sight better in this role than Samantha Sloyan is as Bev Keane, the church’s self-appointed guardian of propriety. This particular variety of unsympathetic, sanctimonious stick-in-the-mud is a thankless role no matter who tries it—cf. the otherwise admirable Marcia Gay Harden in the King adaptation The Mist—and Sloyan strikes out with it here, at least so far.

But, to be fair, I’m very rarely interested in the imagery and mythology of Catholicism, outside the hands of old masters like Scorsese and Coppola (or batshit-crazy people like Ken Russell and Paolo Sorrentino). I was raised Catholic, I went to a Catholic high school, I’m a lapsed-Catholic atheist now, I’ve been there and done that, and there really isn’t much there there, I promise you. I’m much more interested in the idea of a priest bringing evil to his community, because that’s been my experience of the priesthood, both in my childhood parish and my high school. If the evil takes the form of a vampiric entity inside of a big box, well, the metaphor rings true. And that may well be the strongest hand Midnight Mass has to play.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Midnight Mass Episode 1 on Netflix