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The Midnight Club is a new Netflix drama which is nothing to do with the racing car gaming franchise… but then you probably knew that.
Beginning in Sacramento, 1994, the first episode is – for reasons which will become clear – entitled, “The Final Chapter“, teenager Ilonka (Iman Benson) is seen walking downstairs, whilst wearing outdoor shoes, thus setting off my OCD about weather outdoor shoes inside… but enough of my issues.
A quick chat with foster Dad Tim, and then off to a party with her best friend with whom she’s going to college soon, she meets a young lad, but before things can go the way they’d both like, she coughs up some blood, has horrific visions, and is then in the doctor’s, learning she has papillary thyroid carcinoma, aka thyroid cancer. Understandably, she wants to know the worst case scenario, and since she’s a brainbox at school, so she thinks she can beat the odds.
Cut to seeing her seriously ill in hospital, on her 18th birthday, missing out on that planned college life with her BFF.
At this point, despite living with her foster Dad, she considers moving into a hospice, although I’m not sure why she could go there when it would cost a fortune to stay, and Tim isn’t exactly flush with cash, even having to put jobs off to spend time with Ilonka for her treatment.
However, while there, one by one, she meets the other teenagers staying for the foreseeable future, including Kevin – who has leukaemia, plus Amesh and others, and they even have a pinball arcade. Cue a lot of weird freaky stuff happening, which I couldn’t understand in a month of Sundays (the only way I can describe a lot of Young Adult drama, these days), including lots of jump scares.
This leads to her waking up and discovering the titular Midnight Club, sat around talking, as if they’re part of a… well, book club.
The premise does seem rather a nonsense to me. Surely you’d want to spend your time with family and friends, not amongst other kids you’ve never met before?
I saw the first two episodes, and there’s elements I can’t reveal, obviously, but safe to say that one of the kids talks about the games consoles he’s played, but how he won’t get to play 1995’s original Playstation. However, he did start with the Atari 7800. I never had one of those, nor the 5200. In the UK, only the original 2600 was a hit. The Atari 5200 was stupidly incompatible with the 2600, while the 1987 UK release of the Atari 7800 was too late to get a foothold in the market, given that the the ZX Spectrum had been released in 1982 and had stormed the market by then.
In that one, we also learn how Anya became wheelchair-bound, but The Midnight Club will run for ten episodes, and even these two are ridiculously slow-moving, so that’s enough for me.
I like the occasional ’90s tunes, though, like Cypress Hill’s Insane in the Brain, and Blind Melon’s No Rain.
Now, how come there’s no cast list in the credits? Even IMDB and Wikipedia have scant details.
Thanks to our friends at Netflix for the screener prior to release.
The Midnight Club is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Netflix from Friday October 7th, and you can buy the novel in Paperback.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 60 minutes per episode (10 episodes)
Release date: October 7th 2022
Studio: Netflix
Format: 2.00:1
Series Directors: Axelle Carolyn, Michael Fimognari, Mike Flanagan, Viet Nguyen, Morgan Beggs, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour
Creator: Mike Flanagan, Leah Fong
Writers: Mike Flanagan, Leah Fong, Julia Bicknell, Jamie Flanagan, Elan Gale, Chinaka Hodge
Based on the work of: Christopher Pike
Cast:
Ilonka: Iman Benson
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.