Series / The Midnight Club (2022)

"To those before..."

"You guys sneak into the library every night and make ghosts?"
"Tell stories."
" 'Make ghosts' sounds better."

The Midnight Club is a horror mystery-thriller series developed by Mike Flanagan and distributed by Netflix. It counts as Flanagan's fourth series made for the platform after The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass (2021). The series is based on the 1994 novel of the same name by Christopher Pike, who also acts as an executive producer alongside Flanagan.

Iman Benson stars as the terminally ill Ilonka Pawluk, who elects to commit herself to Brightcliffe, a hospice specifically designed for dying young adults. She soon finds that her fellow patients secretly meet at midnight to tell each other spooky stories. The scares soon become real after one of the group members dies and mysterious occurrences follow. Heather Langenkamp, Zach Gilford, and Samantha Sloyan also star.

The series was released in full on October 7th, 2022. Nearly two months later, on December 2nd, it was announced that the show had been cancelled after one season. This was heavily implied to be related to Flanagan's public split with Netflix and his move to Prime Video.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer, Behind the scenes, Final Teaser

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This work contains examples of:

A-F

• Actor Allusion: After passing out when entering the Hospice, Ilonka mentions her seeing an old lady, and Doctor Stanton jokes that "while I'm clearly not an ingenue anymore, I wouldn't call myself old", this clearly being a reference to the actress playing Nancy, the main character and Final Girl, in the first A Nightmare on Elm Street-film.
• Adaptational Name Change: There are many per episode. To name a few:
  • In the original novel, the name of the hospice was Rotterham Home. Here it's been changed to Brightcliffe.
  • Ilonka's cancer in the book is Ovarian, which instead is transferred to Natsuki. Here Ilonka has Thyroid cancer.
  • Dr. White in the book becomes Dr. Georgina Stanton in the series.
  • Anya's story, "The Devil and Dana" is changed to "The Two Danas".
  • Anya's boyfriend Bill in the book becomes her (seemingly) platonic friend Rhett here. Although she names him Bill in her semi-autobiographical story.
• Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade: Spencer wasn't revealed to be gay and dying of AIDS until late in the book. Here, he's open about both from the start.
• Adaptation Distillation: The series condenses several of Christopher Pike's other novels as the stories the club tells, including The Wicked Heart (Kevin's story), Gimme A Kiss (Sandra's story), See You Later (Amesh's story), Witch (Ilonka's story), Road to Nowhere (Natsuki's story), and The Eternal Enemy (Spencer's story). The most notably condensed is Road to Nowhere which simplifies the story to just all taking place in the car. The only story used from the original novel is Anya's "The Devil and Dana", here renamed to "The Two Danas."
• Adaptation Expansion: The show goes more in detail on Ilonka's life prior to finding out she has cancer as well as showing her arriving at the hospice and meeting the others, while the book started with her having been there for a while. It also gives the other named patients more backstories and family members, as well as adding additional patients and staff.
• Adapted Out: Given that it's turning entire novels into stories that could reasonably be told in a single sitting, this is inevitable. The truncation of some stories leads to Shelia's love interest Matt being cut out of The Wicked Heart, and the entire Nazi revelation being cut out of "The Wicked Heart". It also only adapts a single story from the original novel, with Spence and Kevin's stories being replaced with other Christopher Pike stories, and Ilonka's first story replaced with an original story.
• Advertising by Association: The teaser advertises the series as coming "from the producers of The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and The Haunting of Bly Manor."
• Allegorical Character: The hitchhikers in "Road To Nowhere": Freedom Jack represents suicidal depression and Poppy Corn represents the desire to keep living even when life is hard.
• AM/FM Characterization: An improvised Memorial for when one of the kids died ended with them the rest of club singing the then new pop song "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)", a melancholy song about friendship and early death. We then cut to Dr. Stanton sitting alone in her room, looking melancholy while listening to the LP of "Seasons in the Sun", a 70's Melancholy song about friendship and early death.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: The conceit of several of the club's stories, which generally act as a way for the storyteller to deal with some unresolved issue. Sometimes more a thematic through-line, sometimes a revealed Dream, and sometimes literally what genuinely happened except the supernatural was a metaphor for substance abuse and pretending to be perfect in front of your parents and your normal life.
• Ascended Extra: In the original book, Sandra was more of an observer to the club and never shared any stories except for a rambling anecdote about losing her virginity to some guy in the park. The fact she didn't have any stories foreshadowed Sandra being misdiagnosed, meaning she was never really part of the club because she wasn't going to die. Here, Sandra has her storyline regarding her faith and eventually delivers Gimme A Kiss. She still ends up leaving because she was misdiagnosed.
• Back for the Finale: Ruth Codd returns for the finale, not as Anya, but as Scottie in Ilonka's continuation of "Witch". The ending of that story likewise features characters from others, such as Luke and Becky from "See You Later" and Alice from "Gimme A Kiss".
• Bait-and-Switch: In the novel, Sandra was the patient who was misdiagnosed and left the hospice. Ilonka eventually realized Sandra never had stories to share because she wasn't dying, and thus wasn't really part of the club. Here, Sandra does have a story to tell while it's Cheri who never shares any tales with the club giving the sense to those who read the original book that Cheri's the one who'll leave the hospice. It later turns out Sandra's still the misdiagnosed teenager, and Cheri does end up telling a piece of a story when she inspires the club to collectively finish Ilonka's story, "Witch" .
• Bait the Dog: Shasta seems like a friendly Granola Girl there to offer Ilonka help and support, and provide an a chance for her to save herself and her friends through the ritual - especially after it's revealed that she's Julia Jayne. But she was just using Ilonka to get back inside the house so she could sacrifice her and four other people in an attempt to heal her returned sickness.
• Baldness Means Sickness: When Ilonka was informed of her diagnoses, she made a big speech about her being able to beat the odds. Gilligan Cut to her months later extremely bald, celebrating her 18th birthday. Later, when she gets to Brightcliffe, the majority of patients either suffer from this or are implied to have gone through it. the final scene reveals Stanton is also secretly bald, implying she also has cancer.
• Bloody Handprint: The minutes-log of the original iteration of the Midnight Club, degrades halfway through from carefully-taken notes on the meetings to pages of handprints implied to be made with blood.
• But You Were There, and You, and You: With the exception of Ilonka's first story and her reading of Athena's diary, every story told by a member of the club has the characters within the story played by the main cast. The storytellers are clearly taking inspiration from real life, and Anya and Natsuki's cases, telling a metaphorical version of an event in their own lives, but with a supernatural twist.
• Canon Foreigner: The majority of characters are actually original to the series. While Ilonka, Sandra, Anya, Spence, and Kevin all appear in the book, Natsuki, Cheri, Cheri, Amesh, and Tristan were not. Additionally, the staff all have different names, and the majority of patients have family members that were never mentioned in the book.
• Connected All Along: The last minute of the series reveals that Dr. Stanton has the Paragon Hourglass tattoo on the base of her skull, this together with her age, her acquiring the building from Aceso and her dislike for anything Paragon-related heavily suggesting that she is Athena, Aceso's daughter who blew the whistle on the cult's activities.
• Decomposite Character: Several characters from the original book have aspects of their personalities and backstories adapted to new characters.
  • Ilonka's immigrant status is given to Anya, although Anya is Irish while Ilonka was Polish.
  • Spence's lying about his backstory is given to Cheri, while his Sad Clown personality goes to Amesh.
  • Sandra's trait of never telling a story for the club also goes to Cheri.
• Didn't Think This Through: Several:
  • When Georgina confronts Ilonka about how badly things could've gone because of Julia Jayne, Georgina points out that everyone (including Julia) acted as though she found some miracle cure or experienced divine intervention, when it's entirely likely Julia was simply misdiagnosed like Sandra or that her illness simply went into remission. The fact that she was so desperate to break into the hospice to do the ritual shows she wasn't as cured as everyone thought.
  • In all their (admittedly lackluster) attempts at sneaking around, none of the club members ever stopped to wonder why there is always fresh firewood by the fireplace but not a running fire, despite them using it every night and the staff supposedly being unaware of this, and the fire not running during the day.
• Dying Dream:
  • The twist of "Road to Nowhere": Teresa never left her garage. She tried to kill herself with carbon monoxide poisoning and the entire drive has been a hallucination as her mind fought with itself over whether to live or die.
  • The first twenty minutes of "Anya" show the eponymous character seemingly recovered and working as a cashier in 1997, with the other members of the Midnight Club now deceased. It however turns out that this is a dream she's experiencing while properly dying, which slowly becomes more nightmarish as elements of the Club's previously told stories start seeping in. However, while she is experiencing this, the Club collectively start speaking to her sleeping body, and narrate a more positive hypothetical for her life, which causes her nightmare to morph into this new, happy story, allowing her to die peacefully.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Several:
  • Ilonka's deceased foster mother, Maggie, appears only in a photograph in the opening scene of the series. Ilonka later adapts her appearance for Imani's mother several episodes later in "Witch".
  • Anya's former best friend Rhett first appears in the second episode within the story she is telling, as the character "Bill". He appears as himself in a Dying Dream of Anya's five episodes later, and then finally in person to Ilonka in the final episode.

G-L

• Foreshadowing: Just before her first symptoms showed up, Ilonka was at a college party geeking out over the book Frankenstein, a story written by a teenager and it being about a man being obsessed with cheating death and how it ended up turning him into the Villain.
• Gender Flip:
  • The male Dr. White, the administrator running Rotterham Hospice in the original book, becomes the female Dr. Stanton in the show. Additionally, the Devil, who was originally described as resembling James Dean in the book, in "The Two Danas" looks like a glamorously devilish Stanton in the show.
  • The deuteragonist Jane in "Gimme a Kiss" becomes Jake here, as Sandra is basing him on Spence.
  • The protagonist of "The Eternal Enemy" is switched from female to male, because Spence is telling it.
• Genre Shift: A few examples:
  • The original book it is based on has some spooky moments, but is generally a Coming of Age Story with some supernatural elements. The ending even veers slightly into sci-fi. The series meanwhile has significantly more horror elements, and the nested stories are often deliberately written to be scary by the storytellers. The stories also go on genre tangents, with two being sci-fi and one being a teenage noir.
  • Speaking of which, the original book, "Gimme a Kiss" is a teenage Revenge story. Here it's adapted into a black and white Film Noir with ridiculously cliche dialogue.
• Give Me a Sign: The central tenant of the titular club is that it will be the job of the next member who dies to reach out from beyond and give the still-living members a sign, thus proving there is an afterlife. Anya's broken ballerina statue reappearing with the leg inexplicably repaired is taken by them as a one such sign.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: One of the Stories ended up as this when trying to describe depression and suicidal desire.
• Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Justified example. As all the characters are terminally ill, and everyone except Kevin, Natsuki, and Spence has short or shaved hair to signal it, their stories show them with longer hair. Anya is especially notable, where her Author Avatar in "The Two Danas" has near waist-length hair.
• Haunted House: The Brightcliffe hospice comes off like this to Ilonka and Kevin because of the ghosts they see, and their waking flashbacks to the house's past. The other patients also deal with seeing a living shadow haunting them. There is also a very spooky cult-ritual room in a hidden basement. However, the hauntings are never once actually hostile to any of the characters or seek to do them harm. They are just scary-looking. The house itself is mostly as advertised: a hospice with very caring staff who do their best to make the patients comfortable.
• How's Your British Accent?: "See You Later" has a reveal that 'Vincent' is actually Luke from the future. The former's actor Rahul Kohli had been using his natural English accent as Vincent, which in-universe is to fool Luke. Once the twist is revealed, he begins speaking in an American accent.
• Irony: Lampshaded. Amesh includes some form of angels in his climax of "See You Later", and they see that Sandra (who loves including angels in every one of her stories) slept through it.
• Jump Scare: The first story that is told features a lot of these, which is heavily called out by the others. Word of God says this was done after Netflix asked he include some, and not being a fan of them, he did this as a troll. This has earned the series the Guinness World Record for most jump scares in a TV episode. There are a few more throughout the series as well.
• Kids Raiding the Wine Cabinet: The first shown Midnight Club had the kids passing a bottle of wine around (despite the one member pointing out how it could fuck with all their medicine). Spence raided it from Dr. Stanton's private stash. From then on he continues to be the alcohol supplier, and they have wine at almost every meeting.
• Last Minute Hook Up: Kevin and Ilonka finally get together in the last three minutes of the series.
• Living Shadow: A recurring presence at Brightcliffe. One cliffhanger had wheelchair user Anya witnessing her shadow stepping up from her shadow wheelchair. Several other patients also experience a mysterious shadow haunting them as they near death. Their experiences with it end up being incorporated into some of their stories. Anya has the devil appear first as a shadow in "The Two Danas" before solidifying into a human form.

M-R

• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The show approaches the supernatural this way. Seemingly supernatural events are presented in scenarios where they could be mere nightmares or hallucinations caused by the cocktail of painkillers the patients are on Anya appears to experience a kind of afterlife, but it's equally possible that she was having a Dying Dream as her body failed to fight off her cancer.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song: The trailer has "Possum Kingdom" by Toadies. It starts off normal and upbeat, but shifts into a slower and more ominous remix as the drama and supernatural elements start to show.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Aside from what's mentioned in Adaptation Distillation, several of Pike's novels are mentioned by name throughout the series like Spellbound, The Star Group, and The Starlight Crystal. A poster of Mark Garro's cover art for The Starlight Crystal is even shown in the episode Anya.
  • Shasta is a Significant Green Eyed Red Head as per the norm of Christopher Pike's love of this type of heroine. And villainess.
  • The Living Shadow that haunts the characters closest to is adapted straight from the Pike's novel "Remember Me".
• Nested Story: The entire point of the Midnight Club. Every episode, a member tells a story related in some way to their own feelings and experiences, and the episode's plot is on hold as the audience follows the new story.
• No Last Name Given: The majority of the characters are not credited with last names. Ilonka is the only member of the titular club to have her last name (Pawluk) mentioned onscreen, Dr. Stanton is the only staff member at Brightcliffe to be given a last name.
• No More Lies: When it came time to partake in the Ritual and to give up a Sacrifice, the pathological liar of the group told the absolute truth and revealed a important thing about themself.
• Off the Rails: When Ilonka finds herself unable to finish her "Witch" story, the others join in, and it ends up featuring not only characters from other stories, but characters who died in them such as Becky from "See You Later" and Alice from "Gimme A Kiss".
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Anya's father in "The Two Danas" only has two lines, but it's quite obvious that Irish accent isn't real.
• Private Eye Monologue: Sandra's detective story has this, of course.
• Present-Day Past:
  • Generally speaking, the dialogue and slang used by teenage characters sounds more typical of Gen Zers than Gen Xers, such as Natsuki using referring to something as having an "epic cringe factor".
  • In episode 2, Amesh says he regrets that he won't get to play the Playstation or Nintendo 64. Dialogue establishes that this takes place specifically in January 1995; at this point, someone following video games closely would likely be looking forward to the Sega Saturn, as the Playstation wasn't yet known to be the success it would become, but Amesh doesn't even mention the Saturn. More egregiously, the name Nintendo 64 was not yet chosen for that console at that point; it was then known as the Ultra 64.
  • Upon discovering Ilonka's research, Kevin notes that it's "on brand" for her. Although in use before its addition to the Oxford English Dictionary in December 2020, it was not commonly used, if at all, in 1995.
  • In episode 5, Amesh's story mentions the International Space Station, first as featured in the video game created by Victor, and then as a plot point. While within the story it would make sense, as Victor comes from the future and would know of it, it's strange that Amesh, as a narrator, would mention the ISS, which would only begin assembly in 1998, and not the then-operating Mir Space Station. The visual rendition of his story even features the Cupola module which, while iconic and easily recognisable for a modern audience, wasn't completed and installed until 2010.
  • In episode 7, Cheri leads the teenagers in a cello and vocal rendition of "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by Green Day. While not impossibly anachronistic, as the song was written in 1993, the earliest released version was a B-side in 1996 and the iconic single didn't release until late 1997, three years after the series is set. Word of God states that they were aware of the discrepancy, but included the song anyway due to personal importance and fitting the theme.
  • In episode 8, Natsuki describes a situation as "epic cringe factor", which is internet-era teen slang from two separate decades ("epic" from the aughts, "cringe" from the teens).
  • In episode 9, Amesh mentions the X-Files episode "Folie à Deux". This episode aired in 1998, three years after the series is set.
  • Again in episode 9, Spence's story begins with his protagonist using an iMac. The iMac line was introduced in 1998.
• Rewatch Bonus: Several:
  • With the revelation that Shasta is Julia and a member of the Paragon, every interaction she has with Ilonka becomes a transparently obvious manipulation tactic.
  • Taking the showrunner's comments into account the idea that the Janitor was really Death, his seemingly drop-in character appearances take on a new light.
• Romantic False Lead: Katherine, Kevin's girlfriend from home, that he's still in a relationship with out of politeness and therefore preventing him and Ilonka from getting together.

S-Z

• Secret Secret-Keeper: In episode 7, the Club is jarred when Stanton waltzes in and reveals she, and the rest of the staff, have always known about the Club's meetings.
  Stanton: All these years, it's always struck me as funny that you kids think because I don't stop you, that means I must not know. You think we don't notice when all of our patients sneak out at midnight? You think the night nurses don't hear your voices through the doors? Of course we know. Why do you think there's always fresh firewood?
• Significant Double Casting: Typically, the protagonists of each of the titular club's stories are played by the storyteller's actor with members of the rest of main cast playing important parts. However, sometimes the storyteller will switch things up, such as Natsuki casting Spence as the protagonist in her first story, and Word of God states that Anya would have played the protagonist of Ilonka's story in the proposed Season 2.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Multiple in the main storyline as a consequence of not getting a Season 2, and a few in the club's stories.
  • Ilonka, Spence, and Kevin all survive the series. Word of God states that Kevin and Ilonka would both have passed away by the end of Season 2, but Spence would have survived due to the advancements in the AIDS cocktail.
  • In the book The Wicked Heart, Dusty dies by killing himself while in the version told here, Shelia almost does it first but pulls back. He is instead sent to a mental institution.
• Stylistic Suck: Not as blatant as many examples, but these are scary stories being told by teenagers, without a lot of time to workshop. Accordingly the stories will contain cliches, some fairly blatant plot contrivance, and at times the author literally just changing their mind about a major plot point.
• Time Skip: There are a few within the episodes, such about a week occurring between Anya's overdose and the day of Amesh's Death Day Party. Subverted within the episode "Anya" which makes it seem like the show has flashed forward several years, but it's really just a dying dream.
• The Topic of Cancer: Ilonka is dying from thyroid cancer, prompting her to be sent to the hospice. The majority of the patients there are also dying from some form of cancer: Kevin has leukemia, Anya has bone cancer, Sandra has lymphoma, Natsuki has ovarian cancer, and Amesh has glioblastoma (and even still has his chemotherapy port still installed). Cheri is also implied to have some form of cancer (there is talk of her having gone through chemotherapy and also lost her hair) but she never reveals the name of her illness.
• Tragic AIDS Story: Downplayed. Although Spence is dying of AIDS and he's estranged from his mother because of it, he's no more or less angsty than the other characters. In fact, when Ilonka discovers his condition, Anya gives her a big speech outright defying it and insisting they not pity him.
  • Word of God has stated the intention of subverting this. At the end of the series, Spence's mother has begun taking steps towards mending the damage she did by rejecting him, and the plan in Season 2 was to have Spence leave Brightcliffe after the new advances in the AIDS cocktail would leave his condition no longer terminal.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Twice:
  • The titular club is implied to traditionally always have eight members, for the eight teenage patients Brightcliffe can accommodate at a time. Except dialogue suggests that Brightcliffe can accommodate at least nine patients, as at the beginning of the show, Ilonka seems to take the deceased Rachel's place as Anya's roommate and her spot in the club, keeping the club number at eight. Except, at this same time Tristan is dying in the recovery room, and she was presumably also a member of the club, meaning their were actually nine club members at the time, with one being absentee. Tristan's place as Natsuki's roommate is also never filled following her death, while Word of God states that Anya's place would have been replaced with a new patient come Season 2.
  • The reveal that Stanton is Athena falls into this. Heather Langencamp was 58 when the show was released, and Stanton makes a comment that while she's hardly young, she doesn't qualify as "old" yet, implying they are of similar ages. However, Athena is stated to have been 16 in 1940, which would make her 70 in 1994 when the show is set, making her more than a decade older than the actress playing her and putting a lie to Stanton's comment.

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