The official The Midnight Club trailer provides the first concrete preview of Mike Flanagan's chilling new series. The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass creator's next endeavor on Netflix is an adaptation of the 1994 novel of the same name by Christopher Pike. Eight terminally ill teens form the Midnight Club in the basement of Brightcliffe Hospice, where they tell ghost stories to pass the time and face the imminent reality of death. However, when they make a pact that the first to die will attempt communication with the group, one finally does, and strange things begin to happen at Brightcliffe.
Flanagan's highly-anticipated new series looks quite different from some of his earlier projects. While the tone is familiarly bleak and eerie, The Midnight Club is noticeably different in terms of characterization and general appeal due to its teenage cast. It will also contain elements more akin to a classic horror anthology, following the club members' various ghost stories, which insert the characters themselves and Brightcliffe personnel into the terrifying tales. Unfortunately, the previous Midnight Club teaser trailer only gave Flanagan fans a brief glimpse into this mysterious new universe.
Now, Netflix unveils the full trailer for The Midnight Club. The footage provides a more substantial synopsis of the show's plot, showing star Iman Benson as the newest patient of Brightcliffe. After learning of her cancer diagnosis, she arrives at the hospice center and befriends the titular Midnight Club, discovering their after-hours hobby. But soon, she begins to uncover Brightcliffe's horrifying secrets, and the Midnight Club encounters ghosts in more than just their stories. Check out the trailer below:
As expected, the series will heavily focus on these teens' mortality and their will to live beyond the medical diagnosis that forced them into end-of-life hospice care. Their motivations will also see them interact with the adults in and around Brightcliffe, a veritable who's-who of Midnight Mass alumni and other Flanagan mainstays. Primarily, though, Benson's character will aim to use the dark mysteries behind Brightcliffe's unnatural gateway into the beyond to save herself and her friends.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Flanagan series without scares, and The Midnight Club also appears to contain those in spades. Various ghouls and creatures briefly pop up in the trailer to shock the Midnight Club members during their struggle to survive, and they look sufficiently creepy. Despite the series' teen sensibilities, mature elements exist to draw in longtime Flanagan fans and horror lovers itching for a more conventionally frightening follow-up to Hill House. While it is unclear how different The Midnight Club is from Pike's book, one thing is apparent from the trailer: the Netflix series will surely keep audiences up at night.
Source: Netflix