Spooky old building aficionado Mike Flanagan has a new spooky old building on offer in The Midnight Club, the new Netflix series (premiering October 7) that brings a YA bent to Flanagan’s horror repertoire. This time, it’s Brightcliffe Hospice, a care facility for terminally ill teens.
In the new trailer, Ilonka (Iman Benson) is a teenager with a promising future ahead of her—until an unexpected diagnosis of thyroid cancer disrupts all her plans. Instead of heading to Stanford, she discovers Brightcliffe and its community of ailing kids. Her fellow patients welcome Ilonka to “The Midnight Club,” a group that meets every night to “make ghosts” (or tell stories, depending who you ask).
According to the series synopsis, the group makes a pact “that the next of them to die will give the group a sign from the beyond.” But as Ilonka bonds with the other teens, she becomes more determined than ever to live, spurred by the stories of previous Brightcliffe residents who “thought they were gonna die, but didn’t.”
“I don’t care what it costs. If there’s a way to save us, I’d burn the world down,” Ilonka declares. Unfortunately, doing so might threaten the precarious group even further. And based on the extremely spooky hauntings that take place in the trailer, the club clearly opens a door (specifically, the door to the creepy basement) that won’t easily be closed. “You need to stop. And don’t put yourself and all of us in real danger,” warns Sandra (Annarah Cymone).
Co-created by Flanagan and Leah Fong (a writer and producer on Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor), the series also stars Adia, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa, William Chris Sumpter, Sauriyan Sapkota, and Heather Langenkamp. The show will also feature appearances from recurring Flanagan collaborators Rahul Kohli, Zach Gilford, Samantha Sloyan, and Matt Biedel.