#but i felt like as a horror-thriller story the midnight club pulled it's punches A LOT

[its-actually-withered]

I liked The Midnight Club a lot, I think it's mainly because I enjoyed the characters so much. They're all so forgiving and kind to one another, the Found Families vibes mean so much to me❤️ Individually, I found some of the characters really well rounded and interesting, especially Ilonka, Anya and Spencer.

Ilonka as the protagonist did a great job. Yes, some of her decisions were frustrating and her behaviour Not Great sometimes, but given her position in combination with who her character is, I found the story really was driven by her which I think is the job of the protagonist.

She's got agency. She makes her choices, and she's honest about why she does what she does. We can follow her line of thought and feeling even if we don't agree with it.

I would've loved to delve deeper into the other characters more, particularly Cheri, Natsuki, Amesh and Kevin.

I liked Sandra okay, I think her story could've also been developed more especially with the conflict she faces in particular in reconciling her faith and her situation.

Honestly, as characters, they were all so great, and I would've loved the opportunity to know each of them the way we got to know Ilonka, Anya and Spencer.

Storytelling wise, I liked aspects of it, but the blend of different genres during the club's run was a little disorientating. It also felt like actually getting to know the characters was cast aside in order to tell the Pike stories. While I could see parallels to the characters telling the stories, we couldn't reliably Intuit what was character and what was story, if that makes sense.

I did enjoy some of the stories though, Natsuki's "Road To Nowhere" especially hit hard, and I think was the closest in paralleling her actual backstory. Anya's "The Two Danas" is also quite close, I think, and they were two of my favourite stories because of it.

Ilonka's "The Final Chapter" and "Witch" also revealed a lot about her reasoning for coming to Brightcliffe, and believing what she did. I think they did the most in emphasizing her belief in wanting to be cured and curing her friends.

The weakest point, I found, was the actual horror.

I was super excited about the cult plot because the psychology nerd in me is endlessly curious, and as a horror trope, haunted houses and cults are my jam. (Obv why I was super excited for The Midnight Club as a whole.)

Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy either aspect as much, but one thing at a time.

I didn't really enjoy the Paragon/Five Sisters cult plot line because it felt very sparse, somehow. I think a lot of the momentum created by Ilonka's discoveries and growing desperation to save Anya was lost in the sauce of the other stories being told.

Brightcliffe as a haunted house plot was also meh, to me. I really was hoping for an overrun of ghosts and strange circumstances explained away by medication and trauma, but beyond the Folie a Deux calling card and the Japanese legend, it felt. Lackluster. Wasted. The Japanese legend also came across as a cope out because there was never a link to it before.

Using the trope of Folie a Deux also wasn't that well established especially since we didn't get Kevin's perspective until much later, and even then, it was a second hand account.

Brightcliffe's overlap with the cult stuff feels like a loose thread left to fray.

I think The Midnight Club's weakness exists because of the dissonance between the character arcs and the cult/haunted house plots. We only really get an intersection with Ilonka, and to a lesser extent, Kevin. There could've been a tie-in with Anya (and previously Rachel) and later Amesh with the Shadow, but there wasn't, and again, that felt like a missed opportunity.

In my mind, I feel like The Midnight Club struggles against the standard set by The Haunting of Hill House, just as The Haunting of Blye Manor and The Midnight Mass did. It isn't quite fair to compare any of the Flanaverse shows to each other, but the overall story themselves just aren't as tightly told as Hill House, even if the actor performances are.