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Editors’ note:
A version of this article appeared first on the author’s website. TGC reviews media that are not suitable for everyone. To help readers make wise viewing decisions, we recommend reading “Should I Watch This?” and checking out a content guide (such as this one for TV-MA-rated Midnight Mass).
This review contains major spoilers.
Even the best of sermons miss their mark when too long-winded. Make no mistake, Midnight Mass, the latest horror series from director Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House), is both a sermon and long-winded. However, the punch line to this cinematic polemic is more about gauzy postmodern logic than anything with theological bite.
Some have described the new Netflix miniseries—centered on St. Patrick’s Church, a small Catholic church on sparsely populated Crockett Island—as “Catholic horror at its best.” Although the captivating story is infused with Christian imagery, hymns, liturgy, and vestments, the gospel that comes through is decidedly secular—and ultimately hopeless. Capturing the mood of deconstruction and “spiritual but not religious” anti-institutionalism, Midnight Mass turns the accoutrements of religion into props in a horror show—suggesting (rather unsubtly) that the Christian church has been a contagion of evil and death far more than an agent of healing and a herald of good news.
Continued below.
Netflix’s ‘Midnight Mass’ Offers Hopeless Salvation
A version of this article appeared first on the author’s website. TGC reviews media that are not suitable for everyone. To help readers make wise viewing decisions, we recommend reading “Should I Watch This?” and checking out a content guide (such as this one for TV-MA-rated Midnight Mass).
This review contains major spoilers.
Even the best of sermons miss their mark when too long-winded. Make no mistake, Midnight Mass, the latest horror series from director Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House), is both a sermon and long-winded. However, the punch line to this cinematic polemic is more about gauzy postmodern logic than anything with theological bite.
Some have described the new Netflix miniseries—centered on St. Patrick’s Church, a small Catholic church on sparsely populated Crockett Island—as “Catholic horror at its best.” Although the captivating story is infused with Christian imagery, hymns, liturgy, and vestments, the gospel that comes through is decidedly secular—and ultimately hopeless. Capturing the mood of deconstruction and “spiritual but not religious” anti-institutionalism, Midnight Mass turns the accoutrements of religion into props in a horror show—suggesting (rather unsubtly) that the Christian church has been a contagion of evil and death far more than an agent of healing and a herald of good news.
Continued below.
Netflix’s ‘Midnight Mass’ Offers Hopeless Salvation
