a review of 午夜弥撒

trigger warning: christians. sometimes it's just so painfully obvious when a story is written by a man. this is like twilight and passion of the christ wrapped up into an eight hour movie. a pretty interesting and great central story is occluded by endless exposition, and terrifically unbelievable dialogue. this could have been great with better actors and if it was three hours long. the allegory is too on the nose. christians are terribly annoying murderous vampires (derogatory) (the most annoying ever to grace the screen) who think they are god. (also, are these the first ever straight, chaste vampires?) way too many monologues that just serve as a soapbox for some bootleg philosophy or moral stance. very painfully straight. way too many character monologues spouting off stuff anti-abortion, anti-woman zealots would say. (weird fixation on WOMEN being pregnant in this one.) why is it that characters in vampire stories have never heard of vampires before. vampires don't exist in their world? no vampire lore? miracles. it's miracles. obviously. truly psychotic portrayal of how recovery from addiction works. but that's to be expected. writers basically never get that right. "still mostly normal blood, made up of typical, boring old red blood cells." did mike flanagan go to middle school? why is this the second (out of three) mike flanagan mini series i wished was shorter. (bly manor rules though. it is perfectly splendid.) kinda interesting at points. often a total slog.