"The Midnight Club is an American horror mystery-thriller television series created by Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong. Mike Flanagan is the main director, lead writer, and head producer of the show. The series takes place in a hospice, a place where people who are very sick receive care. It follows eight young adults who are seriously ill and form a group called 'the Midnight Club.' Each night, they gather to share scary stories with one another. The show includes a main story that continues throughout the series, as well as scenes that show the scary tales they tell.
Although the series is mostly based on the 1994 novel The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike, it also includes stories from 27 other books by Pike that are part of the 'Midnight Club' collection.
The series features actors Iman Benson, Adia, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa, Annarah Shephard, William Chris Sumpter, and Sauriyan Sapkota as the eight members of the Midnight Club. Heather Langenkamp, Zach Gilford, Matt Biedel, and Samantha Sloyan play older characters who work at or live near the hospice. In addition to their main roles, the cast members also act out the characters from the scary stories told in the 'Midnight Club' tales.
The Midnight Club first aired on Netflix on October 7, 2022. Unlike Mike Flanagan’s previous three series, this show is not a miniseries, which is a short series with a fixed number of episodes. Instead, it was planned to have two seasons. However, in December 2022, the series was canceled after only one season was completed."
Overview
A group of eight young adults who are seriously ill lives at the Brightcliffe Home hospice outside Seattle. The hospice is run by a mysterious doctor. These individuals meet every night at midnight to share frightening stories with one another. They have an agreement that the first person to die from their illness will be responsible for contacting the others after they pass away.
Cast
- Iman Benson as Ilonka, a teenager with thyroid cancer who joins Brightcliffe Hospice to find a special kind of treatment
- Igby Rigney as Kevin, a member of the Midnight Club who has terminal leukemia
- Ruth Codd as Anya, Ilonka's roommate with an Irish accent and member of the Midnight Club. She lost her right lower leg due to bone cancer and uses a wheelchair for mobility.
- Annarah Cymone as Sandra, a member of the Midnight Club who has terminal lymphoma and is a devoted Christian
- Chris Sumpter as Spencer, a member of the Midnight Club who has AIDS
- Adia as Cheri, a member of the Midnight Club who has wealthy parents and is a pathological liar
- Aya Furukawa as Natsuki, a member of the Midnight Club who has depression and terminal ovarian cancer
- Sauriyan Sapkota as Amesh, a member of the Midnight Club who has glioblastoma and is the second newest arrival at Brightcliffe
- Matt Biedel as Tim, Ilonka's foster father
- Samantha Sloyan as Shasta, a woman who lives in a commune close to Brightcliffe Hospice
- Zach Gilford as Mark, a Nurse Practitioner at Brightcliffe Hospice
- Heather Langenkamp as Dr. Georgina Stanton, the enigmatic doctor who runs Brightcliffe Hospice
- Emilija Baranac as Katherine, Kevin's girlfriend
- Daniel Diemer as Rhett, Anya's former friend
- Katie Parker as Aceso, founder of Paragon
- Larsen Thompson as Julia Jayne, a former patient at Brightcliffe Hospice
- Robert Longstreet as Janitor at Brightcliffe Hospice
- William B. Davis as Mirror Man, a ghostly figure in Ilonka's visions
- Patricia Drake as a ghostly figure in Ilonka's visions
- Crystal Balint as Maggie, Ilonka's late foster mother
- Jenaya Ross as Tristan, bed-ridden Brightcliffe Hospice resident
- Henry Thomas as Freedom Jack, a character in Natsuki's Midnight Club story
- Alex Essoe as Poppy Corn, a character in Natsuki's Midnight Club story
- Rahul Kohli as Vincent, a character in Amesh's Midnight Club story
- Michael Trucco as Frederick, a character in Amesh's Midnight Club story
Production
In May 2020, it was announced that Netflix would create an adaptation of Christopher Pike’s young adult novel The Midnight Club. Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong were responsible for making the series. In an interview with IGN, Flanagan said he was very inspired by Nickelodeon’s horror anthology series Are You Afraid of the Dark? When the series was released in October 2022, Flanagan confirmed that it would also adapt all 28 books by Pike. He described the series as “The Midnight Club—but the stories the kids tell each other will be other Christopher Pike books,” and planned for multiple seasons. On December 1, 2022, Netflix canceled the series after one season. After the cancellation, Flanagan shared details about future seasons on his Tumblr, including the final fates of characters and answers to unanswered questions in the show.
Mike Flanagan’s brother, Jamie, who worked on The Midnight Club as a writer and co-producer, said the club subplot was not part of the original plan. Netflix executives added it because they wanted a supernatural element in the main story. Jamie explained that after the success of Stranger Things, executives wanted teenage characters with magical powers, but they said, “This is about children dying in a hospice—they don’t have magical powers!”
Flanagan announced the cast in a series of tweets on Twitter. The main cast included Adia, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa, Annarah Shephard, William Chris Sumpter, and Sauriyan Sapkota. Heather Langenkamp played the doctor at the hospice for terminally ill patients. Zach Gilford, Matt Biedel, Samantha Sloyan, and Robert Longstreet appeared in recurring roles. In April 2021, Iman Benson, Larsen Thompson, William B. Davis, Crystal Balint, and Patricia Drak joined the cast.
Production for the project began on March 15, 2021, in Burnaby, British Columbia. It was planned to end on September 8, 2021, but finished on September 10. The first two episodes were directed by Flanagan, and other episodes in the season were directed by Axelle Carolyn, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour, Michael Fimognari, Morgan Beggs, and Viet Nguyen.
Reception
The review website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 85% approval rating with an average score of 7.4 out of 10, based on 59 critic reviews. The site’s critics’ summary states, "Mike Flanagan’s successful run of heartfelt horror stories continues in The Midnight Club, a story about teenagers with terminal illnesses told with excitement and joy." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gave the series a score of 65 out of 100 based on 21 critics, showing "generally favorable reviews."
The first episode of the series set a Guinness World Record for the most scripted jump-scares in a single television episode, with 21 jump-scares.
From October 2 to October 23, 2022, The Midnight Club was watched for 90.31 million hours on Netflix’s top 10 list.