The monster in Netflix's Midnight Mass is undoubtedly a vampire, but there's a reason the creature doesn't have its iconic fangs. Life on Crockett Island already wasn't great before the arrival of vampires, with an oil spill and fishing restrictions destroying the local economy. Unfortunately, the appearance of a charismatic young priest named Father Paul (Hamish Linklater) makes things exponentially worse. While Father Paul's arrival brings miracles and unexplained phenomena, everything comes at a cost. In addition to his inspirational sermons and good deeds, Paul also brought a trunk with a bloodthirsty vampire in it. It turns out Paul is secretly Crockett Island's former spiritual leader, Monsignor Pruitt, and he wants to give youth and eternal life to all the island's residents, regardless of their wishes.
Though Midnight Mass doesn't connect to creator Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House or The Haunting of Bly Manor, the series borrows various elements from the shows. For instance, several actors from Flanagan's The Haunting series make appearances. Kate Siegel (Hill House, Bly Manor) plays Erin Greene, a mother-to-be dealing with a traumatic past; Rahul Kohli (Bly Manor) plays Sheriff Hassan, a Muslim man whose promising career is upended by discrimination; and Samantha Sloyan (Hill House) plays Bev Keane, an influential and sinister member of St. Patrick's Church. Additionally, Midnight Mass emulates The Haunting series' cinematography, subtly accenting scenes with disturbing background images.
Though the monster is a vampire, the creature doesn't appear to have fangs. In episode 3, Father Paul, a.k.a. Monsignor Pruitt, explains how he came across the beast in a desert while on a trip to Jerusalem. Pruitt suffered from dementia and wandered in a desert during a storm until he came across a cave. Inside the cave, Midnight Mass introduces its vampire, a terrifying creature that feeds off of Pruitt and eventually saves him with its blood. In many ways, the vampire resembles the monster in Nosferatu, but there's a reason it goes sans the iconic teeth.
Monsignor Pruitt thinks the creature is an angel, and fangs might disrupt that belief. Though the monster is clearly a vampire to Netflix viewers, Pruitt notices several symbols from the Bible. For example, the monster has wings, much like an angel; it lets Pruitt drink its blood, granting him eternal life; and he was afraid when he first saw it, much like figures in the Bible were when they first encountered angels. Since the Bible doesn't include passages about angels having fangs and puncturing the necks of true believers, the vampiric incisors might've been enough to sway Pruitt away from his angelic conclusion. Midnight Mass captures the spirit of religion in several ways, and one of those is letting Pruitt use his faith to explain his experiences.
Overall, Midnight Mass drops several vampire tropes, making things increasingly scarier. Despite pop culture vampire trends, Midnight Mass doesn't attempt to make its vampire sexy in the slightest. Instead, it is a leathery, gruesome, cave-dwelling monster. Additionally, religious iconography doesn't appear to affect the creature in the same way it'd kill vampires in other films and movies, leaving the townspeople with fewer options for protection. Episode 3 also shows the vampire doesn't have perfectly straight pearly whites, so the jaggedness of its teeth may provide all the functionality that fangs would've. Because of all this, Midnight Mass creates its own kind of villain and makes Monsignor Pruitt's ludicrous story just believable enough to get some blood on his hands.