With The Midnight Club adaption by Mike Flanagan hitting Netflix in October, the filmmaker has given details of what we should expect. For fans of his work, from The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor to Midnight Mass, there are things you should expect. He loves reusing many of the same actors, one-shots are a must, monologues will happen, and it will be a mix of an emotional drama and horror story. In an interview with Empire, he revealed that his approach to his take on Christopher Pike’s novel would be more YA than his more mature shows and films. This means fewer monologues and scares that will not be as intense as something like Hill House.
“One of the big things we assumed was that the younger viewers could handle the scares,” he said of the scares. For the monologues, he said, “I wouldn’t subject a viewer of The Midnight Club to an eight-minute monologue.”
Mike Flanagan on delivering The Midnight Club adaption
The series, like the novel, will follow a group of terminally ill kids who gather at night to tell scary stories. The Midnight Club was influential on Mike Flanagan growing up, leading to his huge career in horror that placed him in the likes of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers. His take on the story will have his spin, but from what he said in the interview, this will be faithful compared to some of the more liberal liberties he had taken on previous adaptions.
“He wrote some pretty advanced stuff for his younger readers, and it was not at all uncommon for his teenage characters to die, pretty shockingly. His books were full of things I found really exciting and thrilling and dark. So I became a bit of an addict.”
In classic Mike Flanagan fashion, he will have a mix of old and new faces. Of the “Flanaverse” actors, Samantha Sloyan (Hush, The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass), Zachary Gilford (Midnight Mass), Igby Rigney (Midnight Mass), Annarah Cymone (Midnight Mass), and Matt Biedel (Midnight Mass). It will also star Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa (The Baby-Sitters Club), and Yuki Morita (The Terror).
Next up, Mike Flanagan will also release The Fall of the House of Usher for Netflix. The Edgar Allan Poe twist will be brutal and faster-paced than his normal slow burns. From The Midnight Club, it will star Sloyan, Gilford, Rigney, Biedel, Codd, and Furukawa. It will also star the filmmaker’s wife and collaborator Kate Siegel, Rahul Kohli from Bly Manor and Midnight Mass, Mark Hamill, and more.
The Midnight Club releases on Netflix on October 7.