Horror genius Mike Flanagan, creator and director of instant-horror classics including Netflix’s TV series “The Haunting of Hill House” and supernatural horror film “Doctor Sleep,” has done it yet again.
“Midnight Mass,” which premiered Friday is no exception. Flanagan consistently delivers the best in building suspense and terror while tackling complex emotions including grief, guilt and trauma.
Without going into too much detail and spoiling what may be the best limited-horror series we’ll have all spooky-season, Midnight Mass is a powerful examination of family, faith and fanaticism all neatly wrapped in a classic horror bow.
Flanagan’s characters and the roles they play tighten the noose of totalitarianism around the neck of their small, struggling fishing community.
There are five characters you’ll meet in this fascist-horror hellscape.
The Prophet
Every fascist movement needs a charismatic leader, a silver-tongued charlatan who believes his own lies so deeply that they become the truth.
Actor Hamish Linklater plays a fervent small-town Monsignor and gives a performance that will make him a household name. To let Linklater near a pulpit would be collectively dangerous to our health; the man could convince anyone of anything. Like many other fascist orators, the Monsignor stands before his congregation, full of passion, conviction and lies.
The Prophet will be familiar to anyone who has ever heard the spirited speeches of Jim Jones, a mass murderer, cult leader, preacher and political activist Adolf Hitler, former chancellor and Fuhrer of Germany and leader of the Nazi Party or former U.S. President Donald Trump.
All fascists lie. They lie even when convinced of the ultimate goodness of their purpose. Their lies unify millions and ignite within them the fire of faith. They may even admit, as Linklater’s Father Paul does, that they’re lying and have always been lying right to your face.
But, these authoritarians insist, they had a good reason. The best reason! No fascist lie is without a promise, and the promise is what keeps the hungry millions hanging on, what keeps faith alive, even after the admission that it’s all built on a foundation of falsehoods. They care about you, deeply. And you just have to follow them a little longer, sacrifice a little more and what is promised will be revealed. Economic prosperity. Riches, even. Glory. Supremacy. Everlasting life.
The Apostle
While the Prophet can justify any lie to fit their purpose, the Apostle can find any truth and twist it to their cause. Flanagan’s examination of Beverly Keane, played to unnerving perfection by actress Samantha Sloyan, is a master class in differentiating faith from fanaticism.
While others in the series exhibit faith, attend mass and pray, Keane literally weaponizes her understanding and practice of religion to create a movement of intolerance and violence.
The Prophet could have no better ally. Where they fall short and resort to lies, the Apostle gives people warm, comforting, beautiful truth that absolves them of any personal responsibility for their shortcomings and gives them endless entitlement.
They’re chosen. What the Apostle and the Prophet promise is their divine rights. They’re ordained and therefore anyone who stands in their way is fundamentally and morally wrong. Their prosperity and supremacy must be assured at all costs.
While lies might be a necessary evil for the Prophets of fascist ideologies, for the Apostles, the truth is so flexible, so malleable, that it’s whatever they desire it to be.
For Keane, the truth must always return to three general ideas: first, she can do no wrong. Second, she deserves, even at the expense of all those around her, to prosper. And third, anything other than her total prosperity is an unfair and cruel victimization of her, and is an affront to everything she stands for.
Here is a core element of any fascist movement: the creation of an “us” and a “them.”
While Midnight Mass gets delightfully heavy-handed on the Catholic symbolism, which is now just a staple of the horror genre, Mike Flanagan’s presentation of religion is far from a demonization of religion as a whole.
Flanagan’s criticism of religion run amok, as personified by Keane, is juxtaposed with the selfless faith of people including Canadian actress Kristin Lehman’s motherly Annie Flynn and actress and screenwriter Kate Siegel’s gentle Erin Greene.
Religion, faith in any cause, can be just, and kind, and serve others. When placed in the hands of Bev Keane, religion is a weapon. A master manipulator, she appeases some and poisons others, all while pouring from the same cup. In many ways, the Bev Keanes of the world are far more dangerous than the Father Pauls.
Other famous Apostles throughout history include: Mildred Elizabeth Gillars, an American citizen who was a radio propagandist during World War II for the Nazi government, Kayleigh McEnany, a U.S. conservative political commentator and author who served as press secretary during Trump’s presidency and Ma Anand Sheela, former personal secretary to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the guru and leader of the Rajneesh movement.
The Non-believer
In one of the most startlingly and refreshingly wholesome representations of Muslim faith on screen, British actor Rahul Kohli’s Sheriff Hassan is a man who believes but engages with religion in a way that is balanced with a secular morality and is tempered by logic.
Kohli, who plays a sheriff and a father, believes in separation of religion and state. He is skeptical of miracles and prefers cold, hard facts compared to comforting lies.
There is more than one Non-believer in Midnight Mass. Actress Annabeth Gish’s brilliant and empathetic Dr. Sarah Gunning has never felt she belongs at St. Patrick’s Church. As a lesbian who would rather rely on science than belief in the unprovable, she is at odds with the religious establishment. As a doctor who genuinely cares for everyone, regardless of their faith, she is at odds with Keane and Father Paul’s destructive goals.
The Non-believers including Hassan and Gunning have no tolerance for the intolerant and no patience for bullshit.
The Non-believers challenge fascism for the good of everyone around them, often at their own expense. As fascism infiltrates, as it promises and poisons everyone around them, the Non-believers may not prosper, but at least they keep their wits about them by refusing to drink the Flavor-Aid.
Some Non-believers who resisted fascism include: Sophie Scholl, a German activist who challenged the Nazi Party, Malala Yousafzai, an education activist and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner and Lea Schiavi, an anti-fascist Italian journalist.
The Monster
Mike Flanagan uses a classic horror villain to expose the fascism’s evils but not in the way one would think. Flanagan’s seven-episode series could easily have been a gory, one-villain bloodbath but that would absolve the rest of the Crockett citizens and they deserve their collective guilt and responsibility. After all, it takes a village to raise a fascist-dystopian nightmare.
Like every other character, Flanagan’s Monster is just a stand-in, an allegory, whose presence simply brings out the villainy in the rest of the normal, everyday Crockett citizens.
The Monster is the ugly fulfillment of Bev Keane’s silent longings and the terrifying face of the promises of dominance and safety. Ah, to be, at once, the victim and the victor. How far are the ordinary Crockett citizens willing to go? Are they willing to become the Monsters?
Famous examples of Monsters throughout history include white supremacy, evangelical Christianity, and Wahhabism.
Yourself
The scariest person one can meet during a bloody fascist panic is themself. While many of us would hope our logic and reason would win out, that we would never participate in the violence of the mob, many of us would be wrong.
The Monster and how it comes to live literally and figuratively in the hearts of the Crockett citizens is a scathing indictment of every “good person” who allows fascism into their soul and still has the audacity at the end of the day to call themselves “good.”
It’s also a warning that fascism is so lovely, so benign at first, when presented as convenient truths and comforting lies, it’s truly too easy for ordinary citizens to be duped into swallowing it. Those warm, sticky-sweet placations go down easy but end up turning the stomachs of well-intentioned people who realize too late how fully they’ve allowed themselves to be misled.
Famous examples of people who didn’t know they were the monsters all along include all the “regular” German citizens during World War II, anyone who has ever donated to Pastor Joel Osteen and lived to regret it, and every person who refused the vaccine, only to later die of the coronavirus.
