(ESP-ENG) Cómo lidia con la muerte el Club de Medianoche // How The Midnight Club deals with death?

Hello friends, good vibes to all.

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We are in October and everything I have time to write here will be related to the "spooky season" so today I bring you a series recently released on Netflix that caught my attention for the simple fact that it is a work of Mike Flanagan. In case you don't know very well who this director is, he was in charge of series like: The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor and the latest The Midnight Mass. Flanagan is also well known for his vision of horror which is not always given by the "jump scare" or the gore element, he always tries to go beyond to the point that his series become even reflective I would say.

I say reflective because The Midnight Mass and this one we are going to talk about today have a bit of that, that is, they are stories that seek to connect with the viewer on a deeper level than just generating a scare. This club is a living example of that, here we will see how these young people will have to face death but not from a supernatural or mystical plane, but rather in an extremely raw, real and painful one and having seen the series that for me was quite terrifying the truth. But well, let's talk a little about what this new series is about, it's not what it seems, I'll tell you.

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This plot takes place in a large mansion that serves as a boarding school where a series of young people with terminal illnesses live, from cancer, leukemia to AIDS. They are young people who, seeing that their destiny was written, decided to spend their last months, weeks or days in a quiet place away from all the medical and clinical environment that, given the point of their lives, was already meaningless. They are eight very different people, all with very distinct personalities, but in the end they end up becoming best friends because they discover that they have a particular taste.

That taste in question is for scary stories and that is why they decide to form a group, the midnight club, to meet and tell each other various stories in front of a fireplace just at 12:00 am. But what happens? - There comes a time when what was a simple fun becomes something more and the obsession that they come to experience with the whole subject of death is such that some of them begin to see and feel things a little inexplicable to the point that the stay in that house can become something traumatic and mysterious. All this is also fueled by a kind of pact they make involving the death of one of them and how they have to deal with it when the time comes.

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As I said, this series goes beyond the mere fact that it is a horror story of ghosts and scares, which it has because a Flanagan story without these elements would be incomplete, I think the real terror we see here is how to live after knowing that you have little time left to live, how to carry that burden and deal with it knowing that every day these young people wake up may be the last and even more knowing that the least they are resigned to death because they all want to live. It is a difficult plot, sad, where we see eight young people imagining their lives through horror stories, in which we will see reflected their dreams, fears, joys and desires under the cloak of suspense.

All this is told from the perspective of each of the young people who live in the house, so yes, I think everyone is a protagonist, everyone has something to tell, a hidden secret and above all a story worth knowing. We also see that the plot goes on two tracks, one is real, tangible and in which strange things happen every night and the other is the "fantasy" where we see a second life of each one where the terror is raised a little more, in that world if we see the hand of Flanagan. But beware, the terror of this director is very characteristic, it is very linked to feelings, with this I mean that everything has a deeper reason for being than you might initially think.

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But let's see, not everything is so light and soft, no no, the plot has a background that is touched upon very superficially and that I suspect will be deepened in a second season, in case it exists, at least Flanagan made it clear that this is a story that should be told in more installments. The background has to do with a sect that inhabited that house and that according to the story may have something to do with all the paranormal experiences that are lived there. The truth is that not much is known since they decided to leave many questions unanswered. But then this makes it a bad production? - It is not Flanagan's best, that's for sure, but it is true that I expected much less than what I saw, I went with low expectations and thanks to that I was not so disappointed.

Knowing the times in which we live you have to know that the theme of inclusion is something that is present here, issues such as racism, homophobia, immigration problems, etc. are some of those that we can get to see in this new series. Personally I will never disagree with the visibilization but when it is abused, if this term fits, it can be a bit forced. Is this relevant? - Well, so that there is a better emotional connection with the characters, yes, it is relevant. And speaking of the characters, I would like to do it in a very general way since talking about the eights would be very tedious.

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As I said it is very easy to empathize with everyone because they all have something that makes them endearing. Ilonka (Iman Benson), the main protagonist, is perhaps the most important as she is painted throughout the series as someone special, someone who has a strange attraction to the house so much of the plot revolves around what she decides to do. They are all unique characters with very strong emotional charges and internal struggles that make the series not boring as each one is a different world, a different story to learn from. There is something interesting about this casting and that is that Flanagan has his picks as the vast majority of those we see here have appeared in other installments of his, if not almost all of them. Samantha Sloyan is one who is always going to have the grim and bizarre role and in The Midnight Club she will be no exception. In general terms the casting of these series is very good.

I give it 7.5/10 because although it is true that we are not before the pure and hard terror of Mike Flanagan is a story that is easy to watch, at least I was not bored as I expected, in some moments when the plot gets introspective it may become a little dense but that is not always so the uncertainty returns again to the screen. There is horror, there is jump scare, there is suspense and above all intrigue. I repeat, I think it's not Flanagan's best work but decent at least it is, the life stories of the eight young people that go hand in hand with their scary stories make it somewhat worthwhile. It's on Netflix and consists of 10 episodes of about an hour, I leave the trailer here.

Well friends that's all for today, I hope you liked it.
¡A hug to everyone, see you next time!