Netflix have added the new horror series The Midnight Club to their streaming service, and the first episode alone is full of so many jump scares it’s been awarded a Guinness World Record. No, seriously!
The myriad of pant-blackening scenes that have sparked attention all place in the first episode. In fact, there’s 21 scares in total, so be warned if you’re going to watch: it’ll get pretty scary pretty quickly.
Created by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor), The Midnight Club is based on the 1994 novel of the same name, written by Christopher Pike.
The show follows the story of a group of seven close, terminally ill young adults, who reside in the Rotterdam Home hospice run by a strange doctor.
Every day at midnight, they meet to exchange spooky stories, intrigued by the notion of life after death. During one meeting, they agree that the first one of the group to pass away will promise to communicate with the others from beyond the grave. Sure enough, after one of the friends die, bizarre supernatural occurrences start to take place.
While in conversation with Deadline, Flanagan – who apparently hates jump scares himself – elaborates on the decision to add in so many startling moments. He explains: “I thought, ‘We’re going to do all of them at once, and then if we do it right, a jump scare will be rendered meaningless for the rest of the series.’ It’ll just destroy it”
“Kill it finally until it’s dead. But that didn’t happen. They were like, ‘Great! More [scares]!'”
He continues: My whole career, I completely shit on jump scares as a concept, and I wanted to make sure it was pinned to me, too, as much as it is to the show, to Netflix, and all of us who have inflicted this on everyone.
“Now, I have my name in the Guinness Book of World Records for jump scares, which means next time I get the note, I can say, ‘You know, as the current world record holder for jump scares, I don’t think we need one here.'”
