It is befitting that a man like Mike Flanagan, who seems to inspire a profound and deep devotion among both his fans and his actors, would eventually make a show like Midnight Mass. The US writer-director has made his name adapting other people’s horrific visions for screen: Stephen King (Gerald’s Game; Doctor Sleep); Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House); Henry James (The Haunting of Bly Manor, based on The Turn of the Screw) and Edgar Allan Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher, currently in the works.)
But Midnight Mass was Flanagan’s passion project: entirely his, and inspired by his upbringing in Catholicism, his subsequent atheism, and his love for horror. It was an idea for a novel, then a film script, then an unsuccessful television pitch – before it entered limbo, becoming just the title of a prop book Flanagan put in the background of his films, his way of “keeping the idea alive”.
