on flanagan’s the midnight club
“and she was kind even when she was in a lot of pain. that’s hard to do”
'Grief is not selective. you'll be surprised what grief can grow on.'
'People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. At the point of death, pain is over.
"World's got a funny way of doing what it wants. You pull a rubber band, you can stretch it out. But sooner or later, it's going to want to snap back the way it was. Universe is stubborn.'
"It is not up to us. We don't make the rules, and we do not set to change the outcome. And when people try to find some shortout, some loophole, some advantage over life, over death. People can get hurt.'
"i hope you hear me when say, we're all with you there, and we always will be. You're not alone. Everything's going to be okay.
'It's going to hurt so bad if you stay. It'll be so hard. Life is so fucking hard. And it'll hurt. But I'm fighting for you.'
'Every single one of us is going to die someday. And before we do, every single one of us deserves love.'
‘Time has a permanent hold on us the moment we're born. It allows us to grow, to get big. We go to school, we find jobs, we fall in love. Time lets us do all of these things. But then, in the end, it kills us.’
'That's the thing about time. It brings only one thing with it. Change. It's the only thing certain in the universe. Add time to anything at all, and you get change. A little, or a lot.’
"i don't know if it's possible not to hurt the people you care about. It doesn't mean you have to be alone.”
‘A short, short life. It's not length of life but depth of life.’
‘Ralph Waldo Emerson, he had one more I've always liked. "It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but retire a little from sight...’
“I really thought I didn't want to live. you know, depression is amazing like that. your own brain is trying to kill you. Your own thoughts are trying to kill you and I.. I listen to them. Then.. I thought I wanted to die. but I survived, and I realized how much I wanted to live. And I found out I was dying anyway.”
ok the fact that epitaph by merrit malloy is what reminded me of haunting of hill house, finding out that it’s being mentioned in the midnight club.. both directed by him it feels very dejavu
i teared up when illonka read the poem.. truly truly love how mike flanagan uses horror as a tool to explore the ideas of death, loss, time and grief
I might just be grasping here though, because the theme of dying with dignity but still grasping onto life resonates with me a lot
"i think it's that wonderful connection between a great love story and a great ghost story. The two are really the same thing how each of us when we fall in love is kind of like giving birth to a new ghost, something that's going to follow us for the rest of our lives."
flanagan doing heart wrenching horror.. how desperate everyone in MC was just trying to find something to believe in how nobody questioned illonka for what she wanted to do for anya,how every ghost in their stories are just them coping with their pain & disease..
how fantastical is it that they held onto something so tightly, but it slipped through. like the sunlight in the trees or the wind through the grass. at the end of the day all they wanted was each other to do better. to live.
how terrifying is it to know that you cannot live for much longer? to accept it? to let go of the ghosts and to simply stay present? how do you love and how do you lose? how do you accept loss? how do you grieve? how do you hold someone’s hand and not let go even when they do? how do you let someone go when they’re ready to but you’re not?
but death is an inevitability for all, some sooner than others, and seeing it depicted as something scary, yes, but also something we can gently approach meant so much to me. It feels less like giving up and more on placing our priorities on the depth of life than the length of it. On telling scary stories to friends in the dark while waiting for their ride to whatever comes next.
