Midnight Mass

[olivermoss]

I marathoned it faster than I should have because I wanted to avoid spoilers. It's from the same guy who adapted Haunting of Hill House and also created Haunting of Bly Manor. Hill House was good, Bly Manor is one of the best mini-series I've ever seen.

Also, horror involving Catholicism? Oh yeah. One of my favorite flavors.



But, it all fell a little flat to me.

I guessed Vampire and also the priest being the same guy pretty early on. That isn't really a flaw, though. If you don't guess it's a cohesive mystery coming together and if you do it just shapes the horror.

The main character dies about 75% of the way through the story. Then it becomes an ensemble cast. This transition from being about Riley to about the town worked pretty well. A lot of plot threads started coming together. How each character faced death was really fitting. But, only Leeza and Warren surviving felt pretty flat to me. Riley and Warren were pretty much nothing to each other. They didn't bond. They didn't fight. Warren grew up without his brother. He's at an age where he's preparing for adult life and is pulling away from his family. Warren having a complete lack of a relationship with him makes sense. But the lack of any connection there made the ending fall flat for me.

If Sarah or Erin had also made it, I'd have liked the ending. If Riley had saved Erin, that would be great. If Sarah had made it off the island, saved by her bio dad finally coming to his senses, that would have been amazing. Also, of all the characters, she's the only one where I have a sense of what her life might be life on the mainland. She has the most connection to it and a transferable career.

Horror endings don't need to be satisfying or uplifting, it just felt blah to have two kids with no real bonds to Riley, Sarah, Erin, or Father Pruitt be the survivors. They didn't even feel developed enough as characters, or in their character relationships to the main characters, to really feel an impact from it being them. Leeza is a central character, but more from things done to her. Her one big character moment where she has a lot of lines was her acting in accordance with her faith, and I bet she's less into the whole god thing now.

Part of the problem was too high expectations on my part and also marathoning a very slow show. A lot of people liked it, but it just fell a flat for me between the sermons, monologues and the tail end of the ending.

Also, there was a weird part near the start of it that I initially put aside. Riles says 'pregnant people' and Erin is all 'they tend to be women' and Riles switches to saying 'pregnant women' instead. I wasn't sure what to make of that. I'm still not 100% because 'pregnant women' is a fine thing so say outside of specific medical articles. In retrospect the whole exchange seems really weird. I took it as 'main character is broad minded but isn't going to push the issue', but I can also see it being transphobic since... since there is literally no reason for the exchange except as just a chance to 'correct' someone.

On a Watsonian level she just might be aware of trans issues, but on a Doylist level there is just no reason to have that there unless you are making a point.

I guess I am not 100% sure either way, but it just sucks to be sitting there trying to figure out if the writer was low key showing support for hatred and supports policies that would make my life hell. Sitting here trying to see if I can pin down anything in the story to give it context and also googling the creator to see if he's said shit publicly... this isn't how I should be spending my evening. I'm also tired of stuff coming up in shows I watch and having to have a sit and think about it.

I'd rather be writing or rewatching Roswell.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

the only reason I can think of to prefer the phrase "pregnant women" to the phrase "pregnant people" is to assert that neither under-18s nor trans people are relevant to the discussion, and that preference has a distinct odor of asserting that women aren't people

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it does. I was hoping it was a character viewpoint and not a narrative viewpoint. Unless I missed something, it doesn't look good.

But, like with other shows, can't even bring it up to as an 'did I misread this?' and get a productive discussion in most places that shows are discussed.

[mistressofmuses]

I enjoyed the series (finished watching it last night), but agree that the ending felt slightly lacking. I also caught the whole he-is-the-old-priest earlier than the official reveal, but genuinely liked some of the hints dropped ("the old priest used to stare at me *just like that*", which was doing nice double-duty foreshadowing). The vampire thing had been spoiled by an errant comment from a friend, so I can't say whether I would have for sure caught that one. Even going in knowing it though, I still enjoyed how the whole Catholic theophagy stuff played in.

I absolutely agree that Sarah making it off the island in the end would have made it a stronger ending, as well as giving a more meaningful connection to ideas of sacrifice from her father. She WAS the only character with a strong sense of a potential life beyond the island, even talking about how after her mother died she planned to leave... getting that in such a monkey's-paw way would have seemed like a more cohesive end for her story arc.
(I am okay with Erin having died, despite liking her character, because her monologue about god as the existence of everything was such a focal point of the end, and it seemed an okay resolution to her particular grief arc.)

I caught the line about "pregnant people" and was initially glad to hear the inclusion... and then also gave it a big side-eye with the rest of the interaction.
The way I took it was more of a "this character is open-minded and aware of these things, which is a further way to emphasize the disconnect with this more insular, conservative, religious community" thing.
Buuuuut that could absolutely be me reading into it the interpretation I hope is true, rather than it having been intended as a subtle or not-so-subtle jab.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, if that exchange had been between Riley and any other character I would easily see it as a disconnect, but Erin and him are the ones who are a bit disconnected from most of the islanders.

I just don't know. It's not clear and it sucks.

[mistressofmuses]

It's true, part of his connection with her IS their disconnect from the rest of the island, though she's still a church-goer and more a part of the community than he is. *Maybe* it's just an attempt at showing that his time away (including before his prison time) has changed his worldview and knowledge base that much more drastically than it has even his closest "ally" on the island.

Is it a clumsy-ish attempt at showing a division between the "worldly agnostic" and the "religious to even a slight degree"? Because that's a different kind of unfortunate.

But if it was an innocent or "positive" attempt at acknowledging inclusive language, then having him change his phrasing seems weird, even if Erin-the-character would find the phrase somehow strange.

It isn't clear, and that does suck. Having to second-guess the motive behind something like that, maybe especially from a director who seems to mostly be fairly progressive in terms of storytelling and character choices, is crappy.

And I know it's "putting too much thought into such a small line" but... argh.

[olivermoss]

And I know it's "putting too much thought into such a small line" but... argh.

I know, but it's like ... it points to one of two very different things! I could build a case either way. It's also a single-creator project so it's not an artifact of a clumsy edit as the script bounced around people. I hate thinking about it so much, and I am just tired of stuff like this popping up.

I wasn't that into this particular miniseries, but his previous two are among my favorites ever.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? This is how dogwhistley things work. I CAN build even a "positive" case for trying to bring inclusive language in, but it could also have been intended as a negative commentary on the same, and it's so hard to tell what was intended.

I don't like overthinking stuff like that, but how can you not?

I enjoyed this series and Bly Manor. I need to give Hill House another try - I lost momentum a couple eps in and never finished it. But I've really enjoyed several of his films, too, like Oculus and Hush. So I want to not think that he's secretly an asshole. :/

[olivermoss]

Same, I don't want to think he's an asshole. Bly Manor was amazing. I loved Hill House, but it is a bit hard to get into. I haven't seen his other work. I'd rather have things to just enjoy than ... this.

I swear I like liking things despite my last thousand DW entries!

I am still going to watch his work for now, but I have given too many passes to writers in the past because I like their work. I was talking at length with someone about that last night.

[mistressofmuses]

I'll have to give Hill House another try. I didn't dislike it or anything, just sort of... quit watching, ha.

The divide between artist and art remains a hard one to find sometimes. In absence of overt or blatant acknowledgement that someone holds actively harmful views, I *try* to give the benefit of the doubt, when something is ambiguous. Unfortunately, I know that probably does mean that I give passes to shitty people, because they kept their crappiness sufficiently subtle.

I'm not one to demand utter moral purity and perfection, because then there's going to be no media left anywhere ever, and holding people or creations to genuinely impossible standards is never a game anyone wins. But I DO want to avoid supporting someone who does active harm, or would want to do active harm to people like me or that I care about, or just plain holds views that I find abhorrent. I don't think those two things are contradictory, but it sucks when you're afraid something might trip over the line, but you just can't tell.