Mike Flanagan explores his private horrors in “Midnight Mass”
Writer-director Mike Flanagan has become best known for his adaptations of works by Shirley Jackson (“The Haunting of
Hill House”), Henry James (“The Haunting of Bly Manor”) and Stephen King (“Gerald’s Game,” “Doctor Sleep”). The horrors in his latest project, “Midnight Mass,” a seven-episode limited series on Netflix, are homegrown.
That includes the unease of being an author, not adapter. “There’s nowhere for me to hide now,” Flanagan admitted in a recent video interview, speaking from Los Angeles. “Behind Stephen King is a great place to hide. This is much more frightening.”
Flanagan has earned a reputation for what might be called humanistic horror. Beyond the ghouls and goose bumps, much of his work is centered on deeply felt family drama, populated by damaged characters wrestling with the everyday terrors of being a parent, a partner, a human being. “The Haunting of Hill House,” his popular Netflix series from 2018, plays out like “Six Feet Under” with poltergeists.
“The Haunting of Hill House” was infused with Flanagan’s own experiences with death in his extended family, including specific imagery from his life. But “Midnight Mass,” he said, is by far his most personal work — it is inspired by some of his most persistent fixations, as well as his experiences with religion and addiction.
It begins with a young man and the aftermath of a terrible accident. After years in prison looking for God — not only in the Christian Bible but also in every holy text he can lay his hands on — Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) returns to his childhood home on an isolated island to stay with his family. Soon after, following the arrival of a young, jeans-wearing priest (Hamish Linklater), strange things start happening. Some seem like gifts from an all-loving God; others not so much. Either way, a higher power appears to be taking an active interest in worldly affairs.
That’s right: After having successfully taken on Jackson, James and King, Flanagan is taking on God.
At first glance, the quiet island community of the show seems far from the spooky mansions of “Haunting.” In fact, “Midnight Mass” — which also stars “Haunting” actors Henry Thomas and Kate Siegel, Flanagan’s wife — draws on many of the same preoccupations of that series in its interrogations of theology and faith.
“When you’re talking about the afterlife and the soul, you’re talking about ghosts,” Flanagan said. “We can’t help but be attracted to the idea that death isn’t the end for us and that we’re going to see the people we’ve lost again. That idea is one of the things that interested me in horror in the first place and is as much behind our religions as it is behind our horror fiction.”
Like Riley, Flanagan spent years studying various religions. Ultimately, the books that most spoke to him espoused atheism, rationalism and science — books by Samuel Harris, Christopher Hitchens,
Carl Sagan. “I had more of a spiritual reaction from reading ‘Pale Blue Dot’ than I ever had reading the
Bible,” Flanagan said.
“Midnight Mass” speaks to his continued interest in matters of faith, including faith in its most extreme form. “I’m fascinated by how our beliefs shape how we treat each other,” he said. “Looking at politics and the world today, so many of us are behaving based on the belief that God is on our side and that God dislikes the same people we do.”
Another of Flanagan’s private horrors found its way into the show: his struggle with alcoholism. “I come from a long line of drunken Irishmen,” he said.
“But my biggest fear wasn’t that I would die in a drunken car accident,” he continued. “It was that I would kill someone else and live. That is the beating heart of ‘Midnight Mass.’ ”
He studied film at Towson University in Maryland, where he made a series of three talky movies about love and life on campus. “The 90-minute episodes of ‘Dawson’s Creek’ no one asked for,” he said.
He knew he had found his calling, even if he hadn’t quite found his genre. Moving to Los Angeles, he allowed himself five years to get his foot in the door as a feature filmmaker. Five years went past — twice. He ultimately spent 12 years working as an editor, cutting together late-night car commercials and reality television. Sculpting sense out of piles of raw footage was a useful education, though Flanagan didn’t always feel that way about it at the time. (For the record, he regards his work on “Jealous of My Boogie,” a music video for “Rupaul’s Drag Race,” as up there with some of his best.)
Flanagan was still working as an editor while he directed his Kickstarterfunded feature film, “Absentia” (2011), shooting on weekends with equipment borrowed from work. He was finally able to quit his day job partway through production of his followup feature, “Oculus” (2014). The two films were well-received, but they end on notes of despair that became much rarer in his work.
A more hopeful view of the world found its way into his scripts after he quit the editing gig, became a parent and married Siegel. Flanagan began making the kind of horror that both chills the bones and makes you want to patch things up with a family member afterward.
He has been sober for three years now. “I had people in my life tell me, ‘If you drink enough, it’s a different person that comes out, and he’s pretty terrible.’ ” he said. “I finally hit the point where I said if I don’t change this behavior, I don’t know what will happen.”
That change in trajectory might have something to do with how, for all its terrors, “Midnight Mass” conveys a faith in humanity and redemption. The newfound sobriety is also one of the reasons that, even after struggling so long to get “Midnight Mass” off the ground, he is relieved he didn’t get to make it sooner. “I wasn’t in a place where I could handle the material until now,” he said, sounding grateful.
“I was writing about alcoholism but wasn’t yet sober; I was writing about atheism, but I hadn’t gotten over my anger,” he continued. “I’ve had some beautiful revelations.”