‘Midnight Mass’: Mike Flanagan Stumbles Trying To Mix Horror With A Message In His Latest Netflix Fright [Review]
Netflix has been generous to Mike Flanagan over the last five years, and the consequence of that generosity is style dilation. Flanagan spent the early stages of his career directing movies like “Absentia,” “Oculus,” “Hush,” and “Before I Wake,” small-scale horror efforts with distinctly human hearts; he wasn’t the first filmmaker to care about his cast of victims-in-waiting, but compassion was his prize ingredient, the quality he expressed even at each movie’s peak of suspense.