With Mike Flanagan (“Doctor Sleeps Awakening”), Netflix has secured the services of perhaps the most interesting horror director of our time. “Haunted Hill House”, “Haunted Bly Manor” and “Midnight Mass” recently impressively showcased Flanagan’s virtuosity by bringing unsettling horror and deeply tragic destinies into a coherent common denominator. His new series “Goose bumps at midnight” will be available on the streaming service from October 7, 2022. And again terror comes on silent soles.
For the most part anyway, because while Mike Flanagan is known for having little or no faith in jump scares, Midnight Goosebumps has now broken a world record for doing just that. Already in the first episode, Flanagan invents 21 (!) Jump Scares, which earned him a certificate that a New York Comic Con official handed him for “most scripted jump scares in a TV episode”. Mike Flanagan had this to say about it:
“This is especially important to me because I hate jumpscares and I think they are the worst. Throughout my career people have always told me to add more jumpscares and make them faster. […] I hate them because I feel like it’s really easy to get behind someone and break things.”
But anyone who suspects Mike Flanagan has deviated from his usual course and ignited an absurd jump scare festival with “Goosebumps at Midnight” is wrong. Instead, it’s just one scene where Flanagan uses this highly transparent shock device, only to have Spence (Chris Sumpter) comment on it as “damn cheap”. So the jump scares work on a really funny meta level here, while the series itself takes a very different tone.
+++ Opinion +++
Mike Flanagan is definitely staying true to himself with “Midnight Goosebumps,” I can say that after the first two episodes I’ve seen so far. As in “Haunted Hill House” or “Midnight Mass,” the focus here isn’t on horror (and certainly not on the audience that is constantly afraid of cheap sleight of hand), but rather on character-focused drama. The story, based on Christopher Pike’s novel of the same name, is set at Brightcliffe Hospice in the 1990s. Ilonka (Iman Benson), who suffers from thyroid cancer, is admitted here and gradually meets other young people who are in the final stages of their respective illnesses.
As you know from Mike Flanagan, who is once again the director, screenwriter, producer and developer on “Goosebumps at Midnight”, there is plenty of time to introduce not only the great cast of characters, but also the plot. The hospice resembles a Victorian mansion, in whose labyrinthine, winding corridors one can not only get lost, but also get lost. As a result, “Goosebumps at Midnight” often exudes the charm of classic horror stories, and that’s really what it’s all about when the so-called “Midnight Club” gets together in the basement of the property to scare each other.
Mike Flanagan is one of the film and series creators who reflects on the classic virtues of horror cinema. While the protagonists come first, the horror is allowed to creep in on quiet soles, often only hinted at in the background, and then take on a clearer form from episode to episode. In “Goosebumps at Midnight” it also quickly becomes clear that the hospice has many secrets that Ilonka and Co. want to unravel so that they can also learn something about themselves. In the first two episodes, “Gänsehaut um midnight” seemed to me to be a variation on the German hit series “Club der rote Banden” with a cozy creepy flair.
So if you’re hoping for grosser horror from “Goosebumps at Midnight”, you should instead hit the cinema and watch the strong “Smile”, which we rank among the best shockers of the year, as you can see in the official MOVIESTARTS review. Mike Flanagan, on the other hand, targets an audience that wants to immerse and lose themselves in a story. The slow pace may not appeal to everyone, but the love and attention Flanagan gives in the first two episodes to his lovable and diverse characters is hard to resist in my opinion.