Midnight Mass
Faith's vulnerability to self-deception
This review contains spoilers.
Genre: Supernatural horror miniseries
#television #religion
Midnight Mass is a series about guilt, grief, and a blood-sucking vampire. It's about the struggle to reclaim one's life after addiction has taken it over — whether that addiction is to alcohol, blood, or even self-pity; and about the strange, barely disguised cannibalistic undertones of Communion.
It's also a meditation on the ways religion can pit people against each other just as easily as it can unite them. How scripture can be wielded against the faithful, by both good and bad actors, to justify almost anything.
When Monsignor Pruitt first encounters the vampire, it attacks him and drinks his blood. After initially leaving him for dead, it changes its mind and feeds Pruitt its own blood. Because this has the side-effect of bringing the old man back to the prime of his life, he concludes the vampire is actually an angel. Already, Pruitt's need to fit experiences within the framework of his faith causes him to ignore several glaring problems.
Hoping to spread this gift of rejuvenation, Pruitt brings the “angel” to his hometown on Crockett Island. He then inadvertently dies and comes back to life as a vampire himself, cursed by skin that burns in sunlight and a vicious thirst for blood. Despite these alarming symptoms, he doubles down on his plan to spread the condition to everyone on the island.
A central theme of Midnight Mass is how faith can be hijacked to enable otherwise well-meaning people to engage in this type of questionable behavior. With the backing of scripture, Pruitt convinces himself and the faithful of Crockett Island to go along with an increasingly gruesome plot. Religion is shown to be vulnerable to becoming a vessel for horror, whether unintentionally (as demonstrated by Pruitt) or intentionally (by Beverly Keane).
The rejuvenating vampire blood is used to create apparent miracles. Biblical passages describing the fear angels inspired in those they visited seem to conveniently explain the vampire's terrifying appearance. And when Pruitt experiences mindless bloodlust for the first time, he decides God must have taken control of his body. It's easier to deceive oneself than to look upon the face of hard truth.
Among the few who do not fall prey to this Catholic self-deception are, unsurprisingly, a skeptic, a scientist, and a Muslim. The temptation to find comfortable explanations that avoid challenging an easily-held belief is something we all know. Exercised well, skepticism and scientific inquiry can be tools for fighting that temptation.
But when the risk is not just to a single belief but to one's entire understanding of reality, the mind can grasp at anything it finds to protect itself. Faith cannot allow doubt to creep in and take hold, because that doubt risks becoming the hammer that shatters the whole thing. Instead, it can only double down on itself — more faith, rewarding itself for furious belief in the unbelievable. The alternative, for those who have only ever had faith to lean upon, is like a void, too dreadfully absent of answers to even contemplate.