Island of the dread
Gish touts mysteries, big questions of ‘Midnight Mass’
It wasn’t hard for Annabeth Gish to put her faith in Netflix’s “Midnight Mass.”
The actress teamed up once again with horror maven Mike Flanagan to make the freaky new series, which centers on an isolated island where life is flipped upside down by the arrival of a mysterious priest.
In addition to the show’s twists and turns, Gish appreciates how the show explores heavy subjects in a profound way.
“‘Midnight Mass’ in itself is a departure from any kind of typical horror genre anyway in that it goes into this arena of questioning,” Gish told the Daily News. “It questions so many tenets. It questions religious faith. It questions Catholicism. It questions identity. It questions love.
“It’s complicated, but it’s so beautiful, too, because you have these just authentic, approachable, accessible, everyday characters who are delivering these monologues about science and life and metaphysics and what happens when we die.”
Gish stars in the seven-episode series, out Friday on the streaming service, as Dr. Sarah Gunning, the resident medical professional in a 127-person community where most citizens are devout Catholics.
The show is set on Crockett Island and follows the supernatural phenomena that start to occur there, leaving its population mystified.
“It’s sort of a mythical place, and yet could be anywhere in America,” Gish, 50, explained. “Anywhere, USA. It is isolated because it’s a very sort of small, steeped in religious faith, very devout island, so it’s unique in the sense that it doesn’t have a lot of interaction with the outside world.
“Because it’s already crocheted with all of these individual people who know each other, (were) born and been together for years, there’s just this sense of sensibility that’s all interwoven that kind of makes it easy for fanaticism and zealotry to arrive.”
Gish describes her character as a “bastion of science, medicine and rational thought” on the island.
“Sarah has to serve a purpose of a lot of explanation and exposition, if you will, in terms of explaining and understanding the scientific context for ... all these events, how they could possibly happen,” Gish said.
The actress previously worked with Flanagan on the 2016 horror movie “Before I Wake” and the 2018 Netflix series “The Haunting of Hill House.”
She loves how Flanagan always looks to “push the envelope and be daring” with his projects, and how “Midnight Mass” weaves together the stories of so many characters.
“Not only does he give his actors — especially those that he repeats using and working with — opportunities to do something different, there’s nothing that’s unbelievable,” Gish said. “I feel like any audience member can find someone to relate to as an entry point into the story.”
The new series also stars Hamish Linklater as Father Paul, as well as Flanagan’s wife and frequent collaborator, Kate Siegel, as a schoolteacher on the island.
“I do feel like the meaning and the depth and the scope of it is just so far-reaching,” Gish said of Flanagan’s latest show. “People have to pay attention more closely than they ever have to his work because there’s so much intellectual conversation happening.”