Mike Flanagan's Best Stephen King Series Isn't Based On Anything Stephen King Wrote
Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.
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Over the past decade, Mike Flanagan has become the most prolific adapter of Stephen King’s work in Hollywood. King’s novels and short stories have been getting routinely adapted for the screen since two years after his debut novel was published — Carrie hit bookshelves in 1974, and Brian De Palma turned it into a timeless cinema classic in 1976 — but no filmmaker has gotten King as consistently right as Flanagan since Rob Reiner directed Stand by Me and Misery within four years of each other.
In 2017, Flanagan put his first stamp on the King oeuvre with his creepy, claustrophobic movie adaptation of Gerald’s Game. Then, in 2019, he married King’s original intentions with the iconic but unfaithful Stanley Kubrick film in his ambitious Shining sequel Doctor Sleep. He adapted a decidedly more wholesome King story, “The Life of Chuck,” into a decidedly more wholesome movie, and most recently, he went back and readapted Carrie as a miniseries fleshing out the characters and their backstories and the lore of telekinesis.
These have all been fine adaptations (even if some Carrie devotees despised the changes to the book’s ending), but the Flanagan project that felt the most like flicking through the pages of a Stephen King novel wasn’t any of his official Stephen King adaptations. Midnight Mass isn’t based on any of King’s stories, but it feels the most like a Stephen King story out of Flanagan’s impressive filmography.
Midnight Mass Is A Better Salem's Lot Adaptation Than Any Of The Official Ones
Midnight Mass felt like seeing a Stephen King book brought to life. It has the same basic setup as most King novels — a sleepy, ordinary, all-American town is shaken by the sudden arrival of a mysterious outsider who might not be as benevolent as they seem — but it feels the most like Salem’s Lot. In Salem’s Lot, a writer returns to his hometown, only to find that it’s become infested with bloodsucking vampires. Kurt Barlow has moved to Jerusalem’s Lot, ostensibly to open an antique furniture store, but really to start his own vampire colony.
That’s not too dissimilar to Midnight Mass’ story of a new priest showing up, claiming to be the old priest’s replacement, with his own intentions of starting a vampire colony. Not only does Midnight Mass feel a lot like Salem’s Lot; it’s a more satisfying Salem’s Lot adaptation than any of the official ones. None of the official Salem’s Lot adaptations have even been particularly scary, but Midnight Mass is terrifying.
Midnight Mass is Flanagan’s passion project. It’s a deeply personal story, touching on his religious upbringing and his experiences with sobriety. Like all his best horror stories, it uses the horror tropes and the jump scares and the monsters to reflect the human foibles of his cast of characters. No one blends horror and drama like Flanagan; he uses the horror to symbolize and enhance the drama. The biggest jump in The Haunting of Hill House was a little sister literally screaming out for her siblings to stop fighting and just get along.
On paper, Midnight Mass is a story about a vampiric curse infecting a foggy little town in the middle of nowhere. But the series uses vampirism as a jumping-off point to explore universally relatable themes. Midnight Mass uses the eternal doom of vampirism as a metaphor for the everlasting uphill battles of addiction, grief, and Catholic guilt. Just like a vampire can’t die, a manslaughtering drunk driver can’t forget their worst mistake. Being forced to live with a bloodlust and an aversion to sunlight reflects the existential punishment of being forced to live with the remorse of having cost another human being their life.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.