Midnight Mass (part four)
Part 4: the Just and Unjust Alike
The last few episodes started to confuse me about how vampirism spreads. I'm not sure if it's ever fully explained or not, but by the end I think I can at least make an educated guess.
The angel doesn't kill Riley when it pounces on him and sucks his blood. Either it or Pruitt feeds him some of the angel's blood before he breathes his last, and he ends up becoming another vampire. Until this point, it seemed like the transformation was necessarily a gradual process, but that turns out to not be true at all.
Basically, if you die while being young, healthy, and having a certain quantity of vampire blood in your body, you turn. Drink the vampire blood enough over a long enough period of time, and - after making sure you're young and healthy enough - it'll eventually kill and turn you on its own, but in the meantime any other death will also do.
So, Riley wakes up a few hours after the angel's attack, with a brand new aversion to sunlight and appreciation for haemoglobin. Pruitt comes clean to him about everything, and tries to get him to understand that this way is better for everyone. He doesn't have a satisfying answer for Riley's questions about Joe Collie's death, though. The ones that Bev provided to him are insufficient for Riley, and indeed just turn the latter even more strongly against both religion and vampirism.
Riley stays in the church for a couple of nights, allowing Pruitt and Bev to slake his bloodthirst for the moment using voluntary donations from a couple of townsfolk who have been brought into the know. Then, he flees. Pruitt chooses not to pursue him, against Bev's urging, believing that the intelligent young man will come around in time. Turns out Bev was right.
Well, sort of. The rightness of her position is dependent on what your actual end goal is here. Her vision and Pruitt's are not one and the same.
Riley is unsure of what course of action he should pursue, at first. There are some signs he might be allowing Pruitt to convince him. His retreat from the precipice comes when he - responding to an invitation Pruitt left for him - tries to come back for the evening mass. Before he can enter the building, Riley sees at least one of the parishioners leaving the church in disgust at Pruitt's new flavor of violent, Trumpian sermon.
Specifically, it's the very old woman - the mother of the town doctor - who recognized Pruitt's younger self when he visited her in bed. She's gotten a lot of private attention from the priest since then, and has de-aged to the point where she looks younger than her own daughter. She finally came to church in person, now that she's able-bodied and sharp-minded, and the rejuvenated Pruitt's words shocked and disgusted her. As she leaves the service, she tells her daughter that this priest might look like a miraculously de-aged Pruitt, but that is not the man she remembers. This is not her priest, and this is not her church.
It's not clear if this is just exceptional moral strength on her part, or the fact that she hasn't been up and about enough for recent events to prime her. The fact that she was too senile and out of things to experience the same feelings of abandonment and resentment as the rest of the town after the oil spill, and that her own daughter didn't abandon the island, is also likely a factor. But regardless, observing this refreshing breath of sanity helps Riley get his shit together again.
Riley drops off some letters with his mother, father, and brother, all of whom have been worrying about him with growing intensity (and, in some cases, allowing Bev and her sycophants to half-convince them he may have fallen off the wagon and fled the island in shame). Erin, he approaches in person. He takes her out on a rowboat, on the night ocean. Alone with her, he tells her everything.
She thinks he's gone crazy, naturally. And, whether he's delusional or actually a vampire, she's increasingly disconcerted by the fact that he's brought her out alone, with nowhere to flee, no witnesses, and plenty of ocean to hide a body in.
It's an incredibly tense, foreboding scene. You can feel the horror rising in your chest and into your throat for the entire conversation, knowing what's about to happen.
Only for it to then not happen.
Riley repeats his belief that he hasn't seen a future for himself since his arrest, with becoming a vampire only further cementing it. He believes that Erin has one, though. And, while it's true that there's nowhere for her to escape to on this boat, the reason he took her out is because there's nowhere for him to escape to either. It's very important that she believe his story, so he brought her incontrovertible proof. As dawn breaks, Riley hands the protagonist torch to Erin and uses himself to light it.
The crackling flames, whispering of the waves, and Erin's screams and sobs of horror and grief continue for the entire end credit sequence. It goes hard.
...
The two final episodes of "Midnight Mass" have Erin ignoring Riley's dying request for her to flee to the mainland and save herself, instead heading back to the island to try to save other people too. Her arc, as she chooses to be a final girl when she really didn't need to, is far more heroic and active than Riley's moody, introspective story.
It's also notable that in these final episodes, both protagonist and antagonist roles have women step up to the plate. Erin finds her first allies on the island in the form of the local doctor, Sarah Gunning, and her de-aged mother Mildred. Meanwhile, Pruitt ends up folding as his powers of self-deception give out, and Beverly Keane explicitly takes Pruitt's role as the cult leader and thus the main villain. This is thematically important.
...
As for the ancient winged creature itself, well...we get some surprises there. For now, the long and short of it is that while it's an antagonist, I don't think the angel was ever actually a "villain" at all.
...
Erin first goes to Dr. Gunning to ask a few more questions about her disappearing pregnancy that Riley's testament has just recontextualized. The doctor shows her something that's been occupying most of her own attention lately; blood samples taken from some local townsfolk, including her mother and Erin, that combust when exposed to sunlight. She first discovered it by accident, when a sample she took from Erin was left near an open window.
So, she's inclined to believe her about what happened to Riley. Which in turn inclines her to believe Riley's story at least provisionally, especially considering her mother's warnings about Pruitt.
Unfortunately, it's also the day before Easter, and tonight is supposed to be The Big Event that Pruitt, Bev, and the other initiated inner circle members have been advertising. Tonight's mass is the one where Pruitt is going to perform his biggest miracle yet, no one should miss it.
Even more unfortunately, the two townsfolk who disposed of Joe's body were the mayor and the handyman. Who - worried by Riley and now Erin having gone missing - have decided to disable every boat on the island. Then, just before the scheduled big midnight mass, they shut down the cell tower, and cause a blackout. Suppressing communications for potential saboteurs, and also giving fence-sitters more encouragement to come to church instead of staying home alone in the dark. The whole island starts to take on a distinct "The Wicker Man" vibe, in terms of claustrophobia, paranoia, and entrapment in a small town where everyone is plotting against you. Erin, Sarah, and Mildred have been transformed from longtime and/or returning natives, to foreigners on the outside of a town that doesn't want them in it.
Speaking of which, they try to get Hassan to help them. He doesn't, though, because he has principles: cops don't help women being threatened by their creepy neighbours. Well, this time he doesn't help because he knows no one will cooperate with an investigation he tries to make if he targets the church or its leadership, but still, old muscle memories probably help him in this.
Granted, he's probably right in this case.
...
That night, Beverly leads an Easter candlelight procession through the town, gathering as many townsfolk as she can manage and leading them to the church. Hassan's son Ali pressures his father into coming with him. Riley's parents and brother go. Leeza goes with her mother and in-the-know father. And, unsure of what the hell else to do, Erin and Sarah simply lay low while Mildred - over their warnings - decides to infiltrate the mass. She has to know. Has to see.
Mildred was secretly a very important character all along. She has her own reasons for being more motivated than the other two to see and know for sure what's really happening. Hold onto that for now, though.
At this Easter's midnight mass, Pruitt comes clean to the entire congregation. His identity. His agenda. His benefactor. He even got the latter dressed up all fancy for the reveal.
Getting back to one of the subjects that I said to put a pin in for just a moment, Pruitt reminds the congregation that there's a reason angels introduce themselves with "Be not afraid." The obvious flaw in his argument, of course, is that the pillar man (he's an ancient, heavily mutated vampire with an ambiguously human origin. I see no need to make up a new term for what this thing is when we already have a perfectly good one) never tells them not to be afraid. In fact, it never says anything at all. Put the pin back in again.
The time of Revelation is come. All those who are to be saved, who have been prepared by the drinking of god's given blood, must be crucified like Jesus so that they can be resurrected for life eternal like him. Not a literal crucifixion, but Bev has gathered up the island's entire supply of rat poison and there's a cup for everyone. There are certainly less unpleasant ways to do this, but the suffering - just like with Jesus - is the point.
The first ones to Jonestown it up are the people who were already in on it. When they, sure enough, came back to unlife, others follow suit. Not everyone does, though. Not everyone has attended enough masses and accumulated enough blood.
When Ali is about to drink, Hassan loses it and pulls out his gun. Unfortunately, parishioners grab him before he can use it, and Ali drinks the rat poison before his restrained father's eyes. Then, Mildred grabs the dropped gun and uses it to shoot Pruit, to which the pillar man responds by abruptly pouncing down from the altar, grabbing her, and dragging her out of the building for summary exanguination.
There's violence and chaos in the air, now, and blood on the floor. When the newly turned vampire townsfolk get up, the smell of blood is around them, and they've been primed to do as the holy spirit within them compels them to do.
The ones who never got back up become food for the ones who did. So, too, do the ones who refused (or just didn't get a chance) to drink at all.
A night of blood and murder ensues, as vampires - led by Bev and her cronies - rampage across the island and drink dry every living human they can find.
Hassan and a few nondrinkers (including Leeza the formerly crippled, and Riley's parents and brother) are able to escape in the chaos.
...
The final act of the story plays out in a series of self-sacrifices.
Among the nondrinkers were Riley and Warren's parents, Annie and Edward. They didn't believe the warnings in Riley's letters, but just having read those letters let them recognize warning signs early on in the ceremony. When things from Riley's account started being confirmed, they realized their son had been telling the truth, and made a point of fleeing with their remaining child. At one point, the group has been tracked to their hiding place by Beverly's party, who start throwing molotovs in the windows to smoke them out. Annie Flynn sacrifices herself to buy the others time to escape, stepping out the door and slitting her own throat. The vampires can't resist the sight and smell of so much fresh blood, and simply must feed before they can do anything else.
Before killing herself, though, Annie gives Beverly a little speech that summarizes a lot of the show's message.
ANNIE: Bev, I want you to listen to me, because your whole life I think you've needed to hear this. You aren't a good person. God doesn't love you more than anyone else. You aren't a hero, and you certainly aren't a victim.
BEV: "I wouldn't lecture. Not until you've pulled the plank from your own eye, as it were. Not to speak ill of the dead, but if Riley Flynn - the drunk, the murderer - was evidence of the quality of his parents..."
ANNIE: "He was. Every part of him. And, God loves him, every bit as much as he loves you. Why does that upset you, Bev? Why does it upset you that God loves everyone and not just you?"
This really speaks to the heart of it, whether you keep the theistic baggage or convert it into secular wording. At the core of reaction is the belief in natural hierarchy. Hierarchy for its own sake. The laws must protect only some, and restrict only others. For some to be saved, there must also be unsaved. It's not enough for rich people to exist; there also needs to be poor people, or what is even the point?
...
This also makes Riley's death at the 2/3rds point much more important. I liked him and all, but athletic, brown-haired white guys aren't the only ones who get to be heroes.
Conversely, mad priests and spiteful patriarchs aren't the only ones who get to be villains.
Not only are most of the important actors in these final episodes women, but there's also a broadening of focus onto multiple acts of heroism and sacrifice, by multiple people, including characters like Leeza and Warren who had barely even existed in the story until now. Everyone is equally important, or at least, everyone can be.
...
The burning building gives Bev an idea. There are too many dissenters within the ranks. Some who have already become vampires. Being turned is no guarantee of loyalty, as Riley's case proved. So, since they were planning to repair the boats and start moving on to the mainland tomorrow night anyway, they have no reason to value anything on the island. She decides to burn every building outside of the church grounds. The winds and geography of the island are such that the fire is unlikely to spread there on its, own, but is likely to consume any other far-flung outbuildings and thick forested patches and the like. Come morning, the church, priest's house, and recc center will be the island's only shelters from the sun. The loyalists can simply guard that location and only allow those who have proved themselves worthy to enter.
The resulting sequence has a lot of pogrom or flash-mob imagery in it, with the torch-bearing villagers setting fire to buildings over the backdrop of panic and murderous persecution of the unfaithful. However, this also inspires Erin and her companions. They surreptitiously spread the fire to the boats as well as the buildings. And, in a final showdown, Hassan and Erin give their lives to throw gasoline into the church buildings as well.
Hassan gets some catharsis, at the end, when vampirized townsfolk finally stop pretending and just scream racial slurs and ramble about 9/11 as they kill him. The final church building is set fire to by his own vampire son, Ali, who gets cold feet after watching his father's brutal murder and cannibalism and starts another fire while the others are busy drinking him.
The greatest act of self-sacrifice, however, is Erin's. The pillar man has been rampaging with all the others, grabbing unturned people and feasting, and its final victim is Erin. Earlier in the final episode, the characters learn that while feeding, the "angel" is too blissed out to react to anything going on around it. Even ignoring people touching it or trying to hurt it, unless they start getting in the way of its meal.
So, while its drinking her blood, she uses a knife to cut slashes in its wing membranes. Dozens of slashes. Carefully moving slowly, not getting in its way of feeding on her. Literally turning the other cheek when it tilts her head to drink more, while slowly cutting its wings.
Vampire healing factors were earlier shown to take a little while to kick in. The injuries heal lightning quick, but only after a delay of some 20-30 minutes. This interaction occurs right before dawn.
The adult survivors all, unanimously, prioritize the two children over themselves. When the sun does come up, Leeza and Warren are on a rowboat on the channel, and everyone else is on the shelterless island, either dead or undead. Looks like Erin wasn't even the final girl after all.
...
A few final revelations bring all arcs to their conclusion.
Mysteriously, the pillar man didn't kill Mildred when it carried her off from the church. She comes back to the church as a vampire herself, apparently having been only partially drained of blood and then killed. When she arrives, Father Pruitt has just had a falling out with Bev when he sees just how ugly and how arbitrary the violence is, especially her plan to murder insufficiently loyal vampires using sunlight. He'd been working toward the belief that eternal life would be eternal for those who recieved it, not conditional and revokable. This leads to Bev denouncing him, and leading the townsfolk in their rampage while he has a quiet breakdown in the church. It is in this state that Mildred finds him, and we learn the truth.
The town doctor, Sarah, is Father Pruitt's daughter. Not Mildred's late husband's, as both the husband and Sarah herself had always been told.
When he met the pillar man in that buried ruin, Pruitt's first thought wasn't actually eternal life for all faithful, or even for all of the townsfolk. Those thoughts - along with the rationalization of how the pillar man must be an angel - came later. His first thought was "I can de-age my secret lover and be with her again."
That's why he did it. Everything else was layered self-deception on top of that. A big part of his breakdown was being rejected by Mildred, and subsequently seeing his secret daughter Sarah get killed by his flock. Mildred's horrified reaction at the previous sermon, meanwhile, came from seeing the man she loved say such monstrous things; to her, Pruitt was never a priest, but a boyfriend.
Earlier, when Pruitt was holding vampire Riley in the church, we learned another anecdote about him. When Riley was a child, he found an injured field mouse and brought it to the priest, tearfully asking if God could save it. Pruitt told him to leave the mouse with him, and that he would pray for it. Three days later, he presented the child with a similar-looking mouse that he'd gotten from a pet store on the mainland. Riley bought it, and seeing the child's joy and renewed faith made Pruitt sure it had been worth it. Certainly, the satisfaction Pruitt got out of that was out of having done good, not out of having tricked someone gullible.
Just like when he knocked up one of his parishioner's wives.
Him using his secret familiarity with the townsfolk as "Father Paul Hill" wasn't new for him. He's always been like this. This is always what he's done. Pruitt is fundamentally, before anything else, a liar.
He was never a priest, at heart. He was a stage magician with delusions of grandeur. The pillar man just gave him better magic tricks and grander delusions.
Still, when Mildred sets the church on fire, Pruitt gets some small measure of redemption by helping her do it.
...
As for the "angel," now.
During the final episode, Leeza and Warren stumble into the abandoned house the columnfellow been lairing in. The rotting corpse of the drug dealer (who did actually end up getting a missing person report and a grieving mother showing up on the island to look for, earlier; he mattered too) is still in there. So are many cats, rats, and other small animals, as well as a couple of fresh victims from tonight. Some of whom must have had enough vampire blood in them to be turned, had it not instead decided to drain them completely.
Why did it turn Mildred, instead of turning her into another of these corpses?
Why didn't it either kill Father Pruitt, or turn him right then and there, after it fed on him in the cave? What made it decide to give him the blood and then let him remain alive?
I had my suspicions by the end. Looking at comments from both the writer/director and the pillar man's actor, my suspicions were confirmed.
This creature never had a plan at all.
Whatever and whoever the "angel" used to be, centuries of feral existence had worn its mind down into sand by the time Pruitt encountered it. Particles and fragments of a thinking being is all that we saw. Patterns of behaviour separated from their original context. It killed, or turned, or partially-turned at random. It followed Pruitt back to the island, let him smuggle it in his luggage, and then randomly disappeared for long stretches at a time when he needed it. When he presented it to the congregation, it clearly remembered a kind of aristocratic poise and theatrics. Spreading its wings at dramatically appropriate moments, holding its head high and standing still and serene except when swift action was needed. I wouldn't be surprised if it used to be a cult leader itself, once. It might have even been a no-shit god. But now, it's just reduced to "remembers how to act kinda like one when prompted, sometimes." In its own alien way, it was more senile than the old priest when he met it.
Calling it a villain is thus inaccurate. More just a force of nature that Pruitt and later Beverly managed to steer in vague directions of their choosing.
In my "Angel's Egg" review, I commented on the enigma of the Adam and Eve story, whose context has been lost to the ages and whose intended meaning is almost certainly unknown, and yet which still gets taught as holy scripture by people who spend their lives futilely trying to interpret it. I feel like there's some of that same subtext going on with the pillar man. None of the people "serving" it ever knew what it was, or why it did what it did. The only people who could have shed some light on the subject are long, long gone.
...
The final scene of the series has the vampires realizing that they have no shelter, and dawn is imminent. Some of them had already started to have doubts, after seeing people they loved be killed by other people they loved (or, even worse, themselves), and/or being condemned by Beverly before she lost her condemnation powers along with the church complex. "I did some things tonight...bad things." Regrets, suppressed consciences, all start to come out as the groupthink passes and mania dies down.
We know from Riley and Mildred's examples (along with some other cases) that becoming a vampire doesn't change who you are. The bloodthirst is irresistable when they haven't fed in a while and there's a source of blood right in front of them, but other than that they still have all their emotions, memories, morals, everything. These atavistic feeding-fits aside, they all know what they did. They all chose to do it, while knowing better. Some people, who didn't buy into Bev's doctrine, managed to never do it at all.
But, thanks to the people who did buy into it, everyone and everything burns. Except for these two children, by hard sacrifice of so many of their elders.
Looks like this will be a five-parter, after all.
