And it started out with some promise, which is why we ended up watching all seven episodes, but it went downhill from there. We (the wife and I) wanted to see where the writers and director took it, and we did. It was easily predictable, but I was hoping against hope that people who obviously have no clue about Christianity might get Christianity, but alas they didn’t. If you’re not familiar with it, Midnight Mass is a new Netflix series about a very strange little island with only one lone old Catholic church that eventually dominants everything on the Island, and in very unexpected ways. If you want to watch it and be surprised, I’d suggest you come back to this later because I can’t talk about it without revealing spoilers, including the next sentence.
It starts with a new, young priest, an amazing Hamish Linklater, who supposedly replaces an older, ailing priest, but we find out he is the older priest come back young again. We soon learn how this miracle happens, which introduces us to something that must be unique in literature or movies, angel vampires. I’m not sure why ugly winged creatures who suck his blood make him think of angels, but as he starts to get young and healthy again, that’s what he concludes. He even quotes Scripture to convince himself that angels are scary creatures when portrayed in the Bible, and something good obviously happened, so it’s all good! I think he kind of missed the verse that tells is that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” He and his minions can look awfully good, appealing in many ways, but as Jesus says, you will know them by their fruit. Sucking blood and healing people in any biblical interpretation doesn’t indicate good fruit!
Which gives us fault number one from ignorant secular writers who seem to know the text of Scripture very well (lots and lots of quotes in the show), but little of its actual meaning. It never seems to occur to our good priest that becoming young again and cheating mortality might not be a good thing, and might not be from God. Typical of deluded human beings, priests or not, he goes back to the island with a lie, that the aged Father is recuperating on the mainland and he’s there to fill the gap in the meantime. It never occurs to anybody that he is the aged priest until he reveals his lie in a later episode, and all, literally, hell breaks lose. Our secular writers might know but don’t seem to, that building anything upon lies is not good, and will not last, and will not end well. You would think they know that Jesus said the devil is a liar and, “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Yet they allow the priest to believe the ends justify the means, even unbiblical means.
Things start to come into the open when the priest starts to share his miraculous blood-sucking power to heal a crippled young woman, and the entire town is enthralled and starts coming to church. This can’t be bad, right? But soon things start to turn weird as the power seems to overtake the priest, and he can’t help his lust for blood. Count Dracula has nothing on this guy. He also brings others into his orbit who start to learn the secret, and we realize he has a much bigger plan, which is not important for my point. There are four characters that will help me make that point. First are a young man and women who are back on the island after messing up their lives. She’s sincerely seeking faith and God, while he’s an atheist, and basically sounds like a Buddhist when discussing death with her. Another is the sheriff who is a Muslim, and his son who gets sucked into the church’s orbit because he “wants God.” And finally a nun who is the embodiment of every self-righteous, judgmental, condemning, horrible Christian you can imagine. It’s a cliché in Hollywood, but one the writers couldn’t resist. It reminded me of the 1970s movie Carrie, and the self-righteous, judgmental mother. In fact, the actress who plays the nun even looks like Sissy Spacek, and something tells me that wasn’t an accident.
Needless to say, the show doesn’t end with everyone on the Island living happily ever after. In fact, few live at all, but before that we get “the message!” It’s so ham-handed you feel a little embarrassed for the people that would take money for writing it. The young woman who was sincerely seeking the personal, Christian God, goes on an eloquent soliloquy on the glorious wonders of her molecules being absorbed into the dirt and the energy of the cosmic void. The Christian God didn’t work out, so the Buddhist non-God will have to do. The Muslim and his son are shown praying on the beach as the sun is about to come up, so we know the boy came back home to the “religion of peace.” The nun goes down with everybody else raging against God because her Utopian apocalyptic dreams failed. Lastly, the priest throws away his collar after admitting it was “all a mistake.” I know it wouldn’t make good TV, but all he had to do is pay attention to what the Bible actually says, all of it, and blood sucking misery avoided.
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