WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the entirety of Midnight Mass, streaming now on Netflix.
It’s no secret Mike Flanagan is a huge Stephen King fan, as seen with his adaptations of King’s properties such as Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. Even in his original work, Flanagan packs homages in, per The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor. Interestingly, as Flanagan continues his Netflix resume with Midnight Mass, he actually makes one of King’s most terrifying scenes even darker.
The scene is from 1999’s Storm of the Century, which King wrote straight for TV via three episodes on ABC. There, Linoge, a demonic being disguised as an older man, manipulated the citizens of Little Tall Island, pushing them to turn on each other as a storm hit. In the finale, Linoge finally appeared as everyone was holed up in a town hall meeting, making his presence and intentions clear.
He showed his fangs, literally, explaining that he wanted them to offer him a child to turn into an apprentice or else he’d make folks kill themselves. Linoge came back and had them draw stones after they agreed to the deal, with Molly’s son, Ralphie, getting picked. It wrecked her husband Mike and the town fell apart, as they couldn’t live with what they did. It proved how selfish and sadistic mankind could be, adding a cerebral air to the horror and psychological suspense.
Midnight Mass follows the same tension-riddled path as the people of Crockett Island end up boarded up in the town’s church for Easter mass on Good Friday night. There, Father Paul and his acolyte, Bev, introduce them to the overlord manipulating all their lives — a vampire, who the Christians think is an angel. This sequence, though, is scarier because the monster is way more demonic than Linoge, who had grey hair and a disfigured face after centuries of being alive.
The vampire also intimidates folks a lot more as his wings span out, petrifying them into drinking the wine, aka his blood, to become immortal to enter the gates of Heaven. This plays into mankind’s most selfish, basic instinct, with people offering themselves up as sacrifices to attain the gift. In fact, it has a darker paternal arc as Sheriff Hassan begs his son, Ali, not to take the wine and make himself a tribute.
What also makes Midnight Mass‘ church scene resonate more is it dives deeper into religion and that broken moral compass as Father Paul, acting as a mouthpiece, and the vamp drop the veil. But while Storm of the Century‘s Molly and her crew were more subservient, Midnight Mass has Mildred refusing, akin to Mike, but she shoots Paul in the head, inciting civil war after the betrayal by the Christians who were working with the vamp all along.
A feeding frenzy takes place as the new bloodsuckers turn on those who didn’t convert, which is what Mike might’ve done had anyone backed him up. Instead, Mike’s people acceded to their creature in civil fashion to broker the bargain, while Midnight Mass has Hassan and co. fighting back, getting violent to stop the purge. As such, the lack of diplomacy and negotiations in Midnight Mass‘ inciting incident crafts more intensity, emotion, action and horror, upping what Linoge enacted in Storm of the Century.
All seven episodes of Midnight Mass are streaming on Netflix.
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