Midnight Mass

A couple of weeks back twitter was buzzing with talk of Mike Flanagan's latest horror series for Netflix. I had watched a few episodes of his Haunting Of Hill House show a few years back and hated it so had no interest in watching this at all. Of course twitter being twitter the spoilers were flying and eventually I'd heard so much about the show I didn't feel the need to watch it.

At 7pm this evening I got the urge to watch something creepy and realising my failing brain had forgotten the spoilers I'd read I popped on ep1 of Midnight Mass, fully expecting to nope out after 20 minutes.

As always with the best TV I come in way behind the pack.

4 and a half hours later its still on. It's fantastic stuff. A story about a small island community and two men who arrive on the same day. One a disgraced prodigal son returned after 4 years in jail for vehicular manslaughter and the other, a new catholic priest sent by the diocese to cover for the regular PP who's fallen ill. It's a strange place, insular, everyone knows everyone else and their business. There's secrets, there's grudges, there's some very very religious folk who look down their noses at others. And now there's something else, something odd, something that really doesn't like the feral community of cats on the island.

It's great stuff, slowburning with a horrible sense of dread and carried by fantastic acting from familiar faces like Annabeth Gish, Zach Gilford, Kristin Lehman and Elliot himself, ET's best buddy, Henry Thomas, as some of the inhabitants of the town we get to know. If you've read much Stephen King you might get a familiar feel as Flanagan lets us get to know the town, how it's people live and interact, some of the everyday darkness lurking underneath before he pulls the rug out from under us ever so slowly.......

The only problem now is being able to turn it off and not watching it until 3am. Hmmmm.