Crockett Island houses a tiny flock with titanic secrets. Prodigal son Riley Flynn rows back home just as a charismatic new priest blows in with the tide. Suddenly, legs mend, intellects bend, and Sunday Mass feels like Comic-Con for the devout. When the sun drops, hymnals snap shut, and the real communion begins, miracles reveal fangs.
Hamish Linklater turns Father Paul into a homily-spewing rock star, equal parts comfort blanket and creeping dread. Zach Gilford gifts Riley a haunted, thousand-yard stare; his blood-pumping echolocation moments practically hum through the screen. Samantha Sloyan’s Bev Keane is nails on a cathedral chalkboard, gloriously sanctimonious and sermon-sniping. Not a weak wafer appears in this communion plate.
Signature Flanagan one-takes drift like incense, lulling viewers before dagger-cutting to terror. Reverent hymns fuse with throat-rumbling drones, as though Gregorian monks discovered sub-woofers. The so-called angel wears cadaver-gray skin and wings that slap chapel air like wet canvas; glimpsing it in a cassock will send your spine on pilgrimage. Riley’s glowing neck veins and sonar whispers prove that less is monstrously more.
The build-up strolls at a Lenten pace, but patience pays off when episode five detonates with Riley’s fiery sacrifice, the series’ emotional peak. This is not horror in the cheap-thrill sense; it’s an intelligent religious drama that wields horror elements as parables. Scripture ricochets through dialogue — most memorably 2 Corinthians 11:14, reminding us that even Satan cosplays an angel of light. Faith, addiction, guilt, and community are tossed onto the altar, daring viewers to decide what is gold and what is fool’s. Flanagan twists multiple narratives without offering easy absolution, diving deeper into personal faith and organized religion than any series of recent memory. When the final hymn fades, you’re left with life lessons rather than loose ends, and an ending so ridiculously satisfying that no extra seasons are required.
Magnificent, slow-burning, and scripture-soaked, Midnight Mass proves itself Netflix’s hidden gem. It will cleanse you, shake you, and leave you forever suspicious of communion wine — and that, brethren, is a heavenly achievement.
