While some fans might want The Haunting Of Hill House canceled, Netflix has been successful with horror, including R. L. Stine's horror trilogy. Now that Mike Flanagan is back with his new TV series Midnight Mass, which is now available for streaming on Netflix, people are wondering how it compares to his last project, The Haunting Of Bly Manor.
There are many reasons why Midnight Mass is much better than Bly Manor, so let's take a look.
The Premise
The premise of Midnight Mass makes it seem much more streamlined and well-suited to a miniseries.
While Victoria Pedretti's Bly Manor performance is amazing, the TV show isn't a direct adaptation of the source material, the Henry James novella The Turn of The Screw. There are many other elements added, from the characters at the mansion where Dani begins working as a governess to her backstory. While these are compelling, the show just doesn't feel all that scary, at least not as terrifying as some scenes in the previous season The Haunting Of Hill House.
Midnight Mass was released on Netflix on Friday, September 24th, 2021, and there are seven episodes, which sounds like the perfect amount. Based on the general storyline, it sounds like it will be more well-crafted and easier to follow than Bly Manor. Hamish Linklater's character, Father Paul, moves to Crockett Island and as soon as he does, some amazing things start happening, and the small-town residents wonder if this is because of a religious force.
Zack Gilford's character Riley Flynn is also at the heart of the story, as he moves back to the island town after some harsh times in his life. Based on the trailer, the show looks beautifully shot and atmospheric, and while that was also true of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass might be a bit more relatable, as Riley is coming to terms with his difficult past.
Fan Reaction To 'Bly Manor'
While horror fans were excited to watch The Haunting Of Bly Manor, especially if they had loved and binge-watched the first season, not everyone thought that it was awesome.
As a fan shared in a Reddit thread, the show became complicated to follow: "Overly convoluted plot. They tried to be clever and it failed spectacularly. This whole season could easily have been boiled down to single movie, and they would have avoid going in circles over and over. They wasted so much time with mind-numbingly boring backstories, that added very little substance to the general plot."
The general feeling on Reddit seems to be that the second season just wasn't scary, and based on the trailer for Midnight Mass, it does feel like this show will be much more terrifying.
Mike Flanagan's Thoughts
Mike Flanagan is an incredibly talented creator who is responsible for some of the most interesting horror movies in recent years. He directed Hush and Before I Wake, along with Oculus, and he also has a TV show in development called The Midnight Club.
Mike Flanagan said Midnight Mass is his "favorite project" and according to Den Of Geek, he even tried this story in a few different ways, from a screenplay to a novel to a TV show. He explained, “The biggest difference for me is that this project has always been where I’ve focused on putting all the personal stuff in. It deals with a lot of what I think about faith and religion and what it means to be alive in the world and what happens when we die. You know, all the little questions like that.”
It really sounds like Midnight Mass was meant to be, as Mike Flanagan believed in it strongly and knew that he really wanted to make it happen. He even had his main character in the movie Hush write a book called Midnight Mass because this story was always hanging out in the back of his mind.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Mike Flanagan is three years sober and that's why this show is such a "personal" thing for him. He said, "I don't know how long I could have gone without writing it. There's a very natural thing that happens where, if you're writing anything that tiptoes into a personal place, you find yourself vomiting up all sorts of things into it. It's happened to me with Hill House in a pretty big way. It happened with [The Haunting of Bly Manor]. This one, though, was the story I always wanted to tell."
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