Mike Flanagan And His Women
By Cisi Eze
Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass (2021) is set on Crockett Island, a community once of “hundreds now dozens”, 30 miles from the mainland. The story explores different motifs – faith, disbelief, islamophobia, death, grief, and bigotry, that slowly unspool over seven episodes. To give more away would ruin some of the best surprises, but suffice to say it takes a familiar monster and uses it in a wholly unique way.
Midnight Mass is filled with well-rounded, tragic, female characters, complete with compelling back stories that contextualise their behaviours. Flanagan depicts the heroines in this series differently from how many male writers, producers, and directors of the horror genre have done in. Through his lens, he brings femininity to the centre and takes up space with their rich, layered lives, and well-told stories, unobjectified and unsimplified.
At the centre of the madness on Crockett Island stands Beverly Keane (Samantha Sloyan), a bigoted school teacher, who somewhat fits into the monstrous-feminine stereotype as she incubates and abets the evil that runs throughout the show. Evil does not always self-propagate. Sometimes, it needs another person for it to become rife – with or without their consent. She buttresses how monsters can appear harmless and well-meaning. Being custodian of all that poison in the school pantry alludes to how much bitterness and wickedness she stores inside her heart. When called out on her bullshit, she hides beneath a veneer of heightened religious piety.
Beverley, for all her hateful core and despicable deeds, is a three-dimensional character with a rich internal life, and just one in a string of complex female antagonists that Flanagan has brought to the screen. Rose the Hat, the main antagonist in Doctor Sleep (2019), is played with gusto by the phenomenal Rebecca Ferguson; the subtle increments with which she switches from sweet and maternal to malevolent is terrifying. Rose lures adorable children to her with whimsical parlour games before revelling in their torture. Through Flanagan’s lens (and Ferguson’s performance) she became one of the most compelling female monsters a Stephen King adaptation ever created. While Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) shows us Viola Willoughby (Kate Siegel), The Lady of the Lake, as the manor’s resident evil, a woman whose vanity, stubbornness, and betrayal harden her into becoming a monster. And perhaps most tragically of all is Olivia Crain (Carla Gugino) in Haunting of Hill House (2018), the loving matriarch of the family who’s tormented by the house. Her sanity is slowly chipped away at until she commits an unspeakable act, attempting to murder her own children, succeeding in killing the housekeeper’s daughter, and then taking her own life. Olivia Crane remains a tragically and ultimately sympathetic figure, and the terrible things she does come from a place of vulnerability, not sadism.
As Mara Bachman wrote for ScreenRant, “For decades, male villains have dominated horror movies while female villains only make the occasional appearance and tend to fall into stereotypes. It is common that they reside in stereotypical constructs such as the deviant seductress or the unhinged women as well as scorned or suffering victims.” This doesn’t apply to any of Mike Flanagan’s creations, he subverts this narrative by giving us women that are neither simplistic nor passive people incapable of wielding agency.
Considering low female crime rates might be the explanation for fewer female antagonists in horror cinema, it makes Flanagan’s body of work relevant to the feminist discourse. Telling more stories with female antagonists sends us subliminal messages that women are not helpless, and are in fact capable of perpetuating the same magnitude of evil as men. Society can view women as custodians of virtue, making it hard to comprehend how women could be evil without turning them into one-note hysterical monsters, something Flanagan continually refuses to do.
Not only that, I feel we need more “feminism-supporting/preaching” works from men. No one needs the type of Hollywood male feminist icon parodied in Bojack Horseman, who says in Bojack Horseman (Season 5, Episode 4), “Everyone loves a male feminist. It turns out the problem with feminism all along is it just wasn’t men doing it.” However, true allyship is worth acknowledging and praising.
Kate Siegel, his wife and frequent collaborator, turns in an extraordinary performance in Midnight Mass as Erin Greene, a pregnant schoolteacher who has run away from addiction and a violent marriage to have her baby on Crockett Island. Erin is also dealing with the ramifications of her own abusive childhood on Crockett and turns to her faith for comfort and strength. Much of what she endures is absolutely horrifying, but she remains a strong, complicated woman. Siegel, whether being the tragic heroine of Midnight Mass, the antagonist of Bly Manor, or the resourceful deaf author under attack in Hush (2016), always delivers fascinating results with Flanagan.
Although the Flanagan universe is predominantly white there have been a few actors of colour that have shone in their roles. While The Haunting of Bly Manor wasn’t for everyone, the consensus was that T’Nia Miller as the housekeeper Mrs Grose was the highlight. The population of Crockett isn’t very diverse (and as a Black woman, I don’t know if I would be so eager to live on a remote island predominantly inhabited by white people). Its Sheriff, Hassan, a Muslim, faces his own share of prejudice and his reasons for relocating to the middle of nowhere are harrowing. Midnight Mass’s two women of colour, Dolly Scarborough (Crystal Balint) and wheelchair-using Leeza Scarborough (Annarah Symone) are a devout mother and daughter who test the theory that anyone would drink the Kool-Aid with the right amount of persuasion.
Watching Midnight Mass is a thrilling and beautiful experience filled with soaring music and wonderful cinematography, the show delivers on every conceivable level. Better yet, Mike Flanagan continues to deliver such a rich variety of women, who even if they don’t survive, leave quite the impression.
Cisi Eze works as a freelance journalist, writer, and comic artist. She makes comics and writes on issues she feels strongly about - LGBT+ rights, feminism, gender issues, and mental health. Her works are on platforms such as African Women in Media, Signal Horizon, LAPP- The Brand, and Gender IT to name a few. She has contributed to anthologies – Exhale: Queer African Erotic Fiction, Edge: A Killer Thriller Anthology, among others. Her first book is titled “Of Women, Edges, and Parks” (2019). More of her random musings are on her site – shadesofcisi.
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