It’s spooky, scary movie month and I thought I’d let you know about one of my favorite series—Midnight Mass. I wrote this essay on it last year and tried to pitch it to some places but I got no bites so instead I’m sending it to you, my fellow supportive subscribers. Midnight Mass came out last October on Netflix and, IMHO, it also happens to be one of the finest cinematic explorations of religion and faith since Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (and perhaps, the similarly horror-themed The Exorcist before it). By the way, go see First Reformed too, it’s with Ethan Hawke and is a brilliant movie about a priest having a crisis of faith.
Midnight Mass follows the arrival of a new priest, Father Paul (played terrifically by Hamish Linklater) to a small, derelict fishing island (the fictional Crocket Island) and the miracles, signs, and supernatural events that follow him there. The series is created, written, and directed by Mike Flanagan—of Netflix’s The Haunting of House Hill and Bly Manor fame, along with directing a couple of Stephen King films like Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep also in his pedigree.
Midnight Mass explores the topic of religion and faith from multiple points of view, with a depth and complexity generally lacking in spiritually themed television or movies. The series is a contemplative, piece of religious commentary and while scary at points, it mostly saves it upsetting, stomach-churning moments for the last couple episodes. Yet I’ve found myself returning in thought to the series more and more in the weeks since I’ve finished the show. For, like most good pieces of art, Midnight Mass is a show that stays with you long after the credits, gets better with a second watch, and rewards the patient viewer with a penultimate and final episode that is one of the scariest in television history.
Like Hill House or Bly Manor, Midnight is not strictly a horror or “scary” movie. In the vast horror-canon-genre, it’s more of a creeping, atmospheric show rooted in character development and thorough storytelling with some occasional horror/thriller/suspenseful elements. That also means Midnight Mass is not for everyone. The first three episodes are, honestly, pretty slow. In fact, nothing much scary happens until the fourth or fifth episode, when the series takes a horrific and bloody turn. The religious monologues and conversations can occasionally grow tedious if you’re not interested in the subject matter. I didn’t mind however, because the camera work is terrific, every scene is lit and shot beautifully, and the acapella Catholic hymns provide the show with a beautiful and haunting soundtrack. There are characters who need to be set up and you can tell, or at least hope, that this is going to be a slow burn thriller of a show that culminates in a thrilling final crescendo. But if you’ve grown up in or around religion at all, or even in a small town, or as Muslim or brown or minority in a small town of white Christians, you should relate to the series fine. Midnight Masses imperfections are rewarded for the patient viewer.
You’ll notice some familiar faces from those other Haunting series in Midnight Mass, like Rahul Kauli and Kate Siegel. Kauli plays the new-in-town sheriff Hassan who seems likeable enough and yet, by definition of him recently moving there, is also an outsider (and a practicing Muslim). Siegel plays local girl Erin Greene who once left town to make it big and is now back, pregnant and separated from her partner, unsure of what’s to come next. Father Paul has mysteriously come to the island to take over for Monsignor Pruitt, the priest who’s been serving St. Patrick’s Church for as long as anyone can remember. There’s also the return of Riley Flynn (played by Zach Gilford) a former altar boy and alcoholic who’s released from prison extremely sobered up after he killed a young girl while driving drunk. He can’t forgive himself for what he’s done and he also can’t believe in God anymore. His believing parents can’t understand why, of course, and demand that he go to church with them—as most believing parents tend to do to their raised-religious-but-now-irreligious children. There’s also the local town drunk and his giant dog, some high-school kids (who, while not meddling, do sneak off and smoke weed as high schoolers are prone to do), and a doctor with a bed-ridden Mom who can’t understand why her Mom seems to be Benjamin-Buttoning into a younger age—along of course with the many other parishioners and attendees of St. Patrick’s and inhabitants of the run-down island.
But Bev Keane is perhaps the most interesting character of the series. She’s second-in-command to Father Paul at St. Patrick’s and a self-righteous busybody. She’s played with a holier-than-though-villainish-Game-of-Thrones-love-to-hate-her-perfection by Samantha Sloyan. She gets under your skin immediately and ultimately becomes the series true source of darkness. Bev is the self-righteous religious “Karen” archetype of many religious settings. Reminiscent of the bigoted, white religious women in Flannery O’ Connor’s short stories who are pious, self-centered and convinced that they are special to God, proper, and so much better than those drunks and heathens out there. It is she who comes to embody the true evil of the island even as another presence looms.
The first sense that something is not right happens when a bunch of mauled, stray cats wash up onshore after a storm. The second occurs when the dog of the town drunk, Joe, appears to have been poisoned. The first miracle to occur is the healing of a faithful young parishioner, Leeza (played by Annarah Cymone) who has become paralyzed in an “accident” that no one seems to talk about. At church, Father Paul invites her to walk out of her wheelchair and, much to the initial shock and disgust of the girl’s parents for trying to put on such a supernatural show (her father is also the town’s mayor) she does just that!
Where does the source of Father Paul’s power come from? This is the mystery of the series that eventually is revealed in episode five. As Bev finds out about the curious power and presence Father Paul has brought with him in his trunk back from Israel, (an “Angel of the Lord” as he puts it), she sees it as a miraculous way to bring others into the fold. Bev Keane helps Father Paul wipe up the blood he might occasionally spill and keep him and his secrets out of the light.
Spoilers Below!
The best use of the dialogue and monologues within the show is the way in which Father Paul and Bev try to excuse their umm, vampiric actions through their use of scripture. “God has a plan,” she tells the mayor and another loyal congregant when they stumble upon Father Paul covered in blood, sitting on the floor next to a dead man the town drunk, Joe, whom Father Paul has just murdered: “You forget Wade that our Lord is warrior and so are his angels,” Bev says. “Our lord sent angels to Egypt to slaughter the first born … God has a plan. He is working through him (Father Paul). We are here to do our part, to witness and do our part. For I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” she quotes Jesus rightfully as saying. “Now if you want to pick and choose which passages are palatable to you (she goes on to remind him that Father Paul healed her daughter) and then, “Do not cherry pick the glories of God!” she screams. The two immediately help move the dead man, no more questions asked. Bev has reasoned with them, through scripture, that this murder is all part of God’s plan, and that if they oppose it, they are opposing God himself. Sound familiar?
In episode five, Father Paul seeks to explain to Riley (the two of them have been meeting for AA meetings) what has happened to him, i.e., why he saw a strange creature in the church rec hall (i.e., the “Angel” that has Father Paul met in the Holy Land and has followed back to Crockett Island) and why that strange creature killed Riley and why Riley has come back from the dead with blood all over him. Father Paul is attempting to justify his actions as he explains why he had to kill Joe and now, Riley.
As the two talk it’s uncanny. Father Paul is charismatic. He’s funny and authentic and smart. Passionate. And you want to believe him. He quotes scripture prodigiously while talking to Riley and the two spar back and forth over theology and the ethics of God’s will and whether or not murder is a part of that. “My will became his will and he moved through me and Joe was taken and I was sustained, I was nourished,” says Father Paul.
“Murderer.” Riley says back to him.
“Well, I suppose so but I had no guilt, none…Finding grace where the guilt should be I wrestled with that. I prayed on that,” says Father Paul. “A murderer maybe, but so was Moses.”
He reads a passage of scripture to Riley that Bev sent to him from Hebrews: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death,[c] so that we may serve the living God!” He emphasizes this phrase, cleanse our conscience so that we may serve the living god, in order to justify his actions and clean conscience.
“For some reason Riley Flynn, God has chosen you,” says Bev as she busts into the Rec Hall with her heavy, Sturge.
“For just as the body is one and has many members and all of the members of the body are many are one so it is with Christ…And so we are here to bless you to keep you.” And then:
“I will raise them up on the last for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink and whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will remain in me and I in them.” Says Bev. (Perhaps you can see where this show is going now).
Perhaps the scariest aspect of this show is how Father Paul and Ben truly believe they are serving God, not their vampire thirst for blood or thr devil. In the last episode, the mayor’s wife says to Bev, “You are not a good person.” This woman then reminds Bev that God loves her just as much as she loves her son, an alcoholic who has killed someone. “Why does that bother you so much?” she asks her. It bothers her as it bothers all self-righteous religious people when reminded of this, they see their faith as something that makes them better than others, gives them more power or control over others, excuses them, and makes them special to God. Or something they can use as a spiritual weapon against others in order to justify their earthly deeds.
Yet in Father Paul’s defense it seems as if his personality has not changed much since his encounter with the “Angel” and he still seeks to help and counsel his community, hence his desire to help start an AA group for Riley and Joe and his willingness to overlook where the power is coming from. He just wants to help. Did Father Paul want to lure everyone into the church so they would die and become immortal like himself? Yes, maybe a little bit. Yet he wanted them to experience the “miracle” he had. But it wasn’t his plan to unleash these people into the community to fulfill their blood thirst, which is exactly what Bev does, and then burns Crockett Island to the grown (every building except the church) so that people are literally forced to “come to God.” Father Paul does seem generally conflicted about what to do after this.
Bev Keane’s faith is a fascistic one. One who believes that it is better to force people to believe in their God and that anything will justify these means. This is the same sort of religion, “faith,” and use of scripture that justified slavery, encourages the dominance of men and rape culture in marriage, and excuses abuse among clergy. In short, it is a weaponization of scripture. The same holy words we use to either practice peace or justify war. (These days, it seems one doesn’t even need to know the scriptures to weaponize scripture. Merely by claiming the name “Christian” in America today one invokes a particularly nationalistic “Christian” god without even needing to understand the context of the holy book they claim to revere).
The spiritual and religious abuse, the weaponization of holy words or prophets for personal or political gain, and the wielding of one’s spiritual authority to manipulate and control others, can (unfortunately) be a part of all religious structures or spiritual circles (or realistically, any structure or person in which people put their trust in an figure of authority). The darkness only grows when transparency is veiled. (The show also reminded me of another piece of pop-culture currently trending last year, the podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, which Jessica Johnson has written about here. )
Eventually Bev Keane does seem to accept that she was wrong. That she was literally ready to burn the island to the ground to bring others to God, or what she thought was “God” in her power-riddled mind. There is nothing left for her now though, nowhere left to go. The island is burning. The sun is breaking across the ocean.