The Midnight Club movie review (2022)

Ilonka (an effectively vulnerable Iman Benson) seems to have everything when it’s all derailed by a terminal cancer diagnosis. She ends up at Brightcliffe, a stand-in for Hill House on the coast that is being used as a hospice for young people. She meets a group of teens who give the show its name. They gather every night in the library and tell scary stories, trying to process what’s going to happen to them through their fiction. Meanwhile, Ilonka uncovers evidence that the hospice and its mysterious manager (Heather Langenkamp of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” fame) are hiding a secret that could save her life. And so each episode alternates between Ilonka’s discoveries at the center and a story being told by one of her friends. The show is fundamentally about how and why stories are told to process the real world. These stories tell more about the person telling them than any other aspect.

There are eight members of The Midnight Club, and the season’s over-long, ten-episode structure allows us to get to know all of them to various degrees. Standouts include Kevin (Igby Rigney), a potential love interest who tells a multi-episode story about a serial killer that gives the show some of its most striking imagery and Anya (Ruth Codd), Ilonka’s bitter but fierce roommate. Kevin’s arc is apparently based on another Pike work titled The Wicked Heart, while another tale stems from Road to Nowhere. Although it may be smart to take other Pike works and incorporate them into this story, I sometimes wish tales that felt more natural and organically like they were drawn from the lives characters like Kevin or Anya. Kevin’s story is well-done, but one can tell it’s not quite Kevin’s story—it's a writer/creator getting clever.

It's also interesting to learn that most of Ilonka’s adventures at Brightcliffe are the creation of Flanagan and Fong and not from the source. It must have been difficult to adapt a book about children telling stories without adding all the other material. However, the story about a former patient who lived and cult members in a wooded area is the least compelling. Ilonka is forced to go on her own program because she finds it too difficult to relate to the Brightcliffe mystery group.