Eight terminally ill teens meet at midnight in a hospice to tell horror stories, and the first one to die must prove the afterlife exists. Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong’s The Midnight Club is a twisty, ambitious teen-horror series that mostly earns its premise.
The show follows Ilonka, Kevin, Anya, Sandra, Amesh, Natsuki, Spencer and Cheri, who make that chilling pact under the watchful eye of Dr. Georgina Stanton. The stories they trade are drawn from Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel The Midnight Club and 27 other Pike books, and the series frequently cuts to the tales themselves.
Trailer, via Netflix.
The Pacing Problem
The first episodes move fast and land hard. The stories are well-chosen, the performances are committed, and the setting — a hospice outside Seattle — gives the show a grim, intimate weight. But the back half of the season slows down. The pacing sags, and the show leans harder on recap than on payoff. A few episodes feel like filler between the show’s own mythos and the stories it tells.
The cast is uniformly strong. Iman Benson anchors the group as Ilonka, and Igby Rigney brings a weary, sharp intelligence to Kevin. Ruth Codd, Annarah Cymone, Sauriyan Sapkota and Aya Furukawa round out the circle with quiet, effective work. William Chris Sumpter and Adia are smaller but solid. Heather Langenkamp plays Stanton with a cool, curious authority, and Samantha Sloyan and Zach Gilford appear as recurring figures tied to the hospice.
The show’s core idea — that death is a shared story — is handled with real risk. Flanagan has built a series where the stakes are literal: dying is the next move in the game, and the show keeps that pressure on throughout.
Where It Falls Short
The series struggles to balance its dual tracks. The main plot, about the teens and their pact, is sharper. The stories they tell — while well-made — sometimes break the tension that keeps the audience invested. The show’s decision to adapt Pike’s short fiction is a clear choice, but it produces a tonal friction that the pacing problem can’t fully resolve.
The show was intended as a two-season run. Netflix canceled it after one season in December 2022, which means the series ends without fully resolving the framework it builds. The ending is abrupt, and the show never quite closes the loop on its central promise.
The Score
The Midnight Club is a well-acted, well-intentioned series that under-delivers on its own setup. The stories are fun, the cast is strong, but the pacing and structure let it down in the back half.
6.5 of 10.
Key Facts Box
- Network: Netflix
- First aired: October 7, 2022
- Last aired: October 7, 2022
- Seasons: 1, 10 episodes
- Creator: Mike Flanagan, Leah Fong
- Showrunner: Mike Flanagan
- Based on: The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike
The show is worth watching for Benson, Rigney and the rest of the young cast, who carry the weight of a story that sometimes undersells itself. It’s a promising start left unfinished, and that unfinished quality is the show’s most telling flaw.
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