There are certain tropes in horror that are so deeply ingrained in pop culture it becomes hard to do anything new with them--and for the most part, this is totally fine. Not every story about a zombie apocalypse or a tortured werewolf has to reinvent the wheel. But at the same time, every once in a while, a story comes along that spins a classic idea into something new so effortlessly that it can't help but feel mindblowing.

This just so happened to be the case with Netflix's Midnight Mass, a miniseries created by Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor maestro, Mike Flanagan, though it wasn't part of that particular anthology universe. In Midnight Mass, a tiny island community is placed abruptly under siege by a mysterious evil that just so happens to coincide with the simultaneous arrival of a new priest, Father Paul, and a young man named Riley who was recently released from prison on the mainland for vehicular manslaughter. At once, it feels like something you might find in a Stephen King story--small town, possible monster--Crockett Island isn't off the coast of Maine but it very well could be. But from there, things spin very abruptly out of control.