On Netflix’s new horror show, the terrific and terrifying The Midnight Club from scare maestro Mike Flanagan, most of the characters are high school kids. And they are all facing something darker than evil spirits: none have long left to live. They board together at the storied Brightcliffe Manor, a special hospice for terminally ill teens. Despite the house’s sobering purpose, the atmosphere can verge on gleeful. These kids might be dying, but at least here there aren’t any parents nagging them to be a “fighter”.
There’s only two adults on staff (Heather Langenkamp as Brightcliffe’s founder and Friday Night Lights’ Zach Gilford as its nurse practitioner) and just one rule – a 10pm curfew that the patients treat like a suggestion. At midnight, they creep out of their rooms and into the old mansion’s library to trade scary stories and, like teens with longer life expectancies, mercilessly pick on each other.
