Christopher Pike's The Midnight Club was published in 1994 and Mike Flanagan's recent Netflix series is a near perfect adaptation. Book adaptations are never easy, proven by the many Stephen King adaptations that fans don't think measure up to the novels. But The Midnight Club proves that it's possible to adapt young adult horror in a careful, thoughtful, and heartwarming way.
Whether Illonka (Iman Benson) thinks that she has been cured or her love interest Kevin (Igby Rigney) is struggling to end his relationship, the characters of The Midnight Club feel raw and vulnerable every step of the way. The series proves the right way to bring words on a page to a TV series.
The first season of The Midnight Club has 10 episodes that are each almost 60 minutes long but never lag for a second. The Midnight Club excels by balancing out two elements from Pike's work: the well-written characters and the structure of the series. A YA horror book is all about the feelings that the characters have. While of course there are horror elements present, whether ghosts or a killer on the loose in a small town or something equally horrifying, the emotions are the most important aspect since the characters are young and dealing with so much. The Midnight Club's best characters draw viewers in immediately as they are open about what they feel.
Flanagan wanted to adapt The Midnight Club in the '90s and he was drawn to the subject of death and the conversations that the characters have. Flanagan has created a perfect adaptation as the teenagers grapple with how to live their last days in ways that will make them happy.
Many young adult book characters are tough and full of pride and readers are able to hear their innermost thoughts and the secrets that they don't want to tell anyone else. It can be tough to adapt a book into a movie or TV show as this gets lost. The Midnight Club doesn't shy away from sharing what the group is feeling. Anya (Ruth Codd) stands out in particular as getting real about the fact that she's dying, likely quicker than the others, and she is really angry.
Anya is a flawless YA character because she's so flawed. She's okay with being unlikable and says what other people want to because she doesn't care anymore. Anya acts like she accepts her fate, but when she gets sicker and sicker, she admits that she's just as terrified as anyone else. This shows her vulnerable humanity and makes it impossible not to love her.
While The Midnight Club is a scary TV show, it never forgets what's important here: the teenagers who are scared of death but who learn to live with it and who decide to be positive and help each other along the way. The TV characters are accurate depictions of what Pike wrote, which is another selling point for the series. Anya has bone cancer in the book, Kevin is creative but torn between staying with his girlfriend and leaving her, and a character does die, leaving the others to wonder if it's possible to send signs from the other side. The end of season 1 shows Kevin and Illonka beginning to date, and the epilogue of the novel sees these characters together thousands of years in the future.
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)
The structure of the series is what works so well and accounts for The Midnight Club's scariest moments. It's tough to translate what's on the page to the screen, and the show does a great job of adapting other books by Christopher Pike. Each story told is based on a novel by the author. It would be pretty dull watching the characters sitting in the library and sharing scary stories without actually seeing them being acted out. The show does a good job by having the actors play out each tale. Even though some of these are cornier than others and not all of them are actually scary, the stories still work for the most part. This is the right call and makes viewers feel as if they are sitting in this warm, cozy library in the middle of the night, hearing about some terrible things.
The debate about whether horror TV shows can be scary like horror movies is definitely subjective, but in the case of The Midnight Club, there are some jump scares that rival any film. The series excels at sharing the inner workings of the main characters who are facing death head on and realizing that they can still live in the time that they have left. It's an emotional story that does the Christopher Pike book justice.