While no one settles in for a horror series hoping for a feelgood romp, Netflix’s latest is grim even by the genre’s bleak standards. The Midnight Club is set at the Brightcliffe Hospice for teens, where its young residents are living out their final days with a terminal diagnosis. In order to sneak in a bit of teenage folly before they die, they also meet at night to tell scary stories.
Inspired by the work of Christopher Pike, whose YA mysteries have proved a gateway drug for many budding horror fans, this late-night storytelling allows the show to draw on Pike’s entire bibliography, which creators Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong then stitch together. It’s a nice premise – so much horror relies on the suspense of its characters surviving past the end credits, but here we begin with death assured – yet it turns out to create an uneven patchwork.
