Editorials
The Corruption of Faith Through False Prophets in ‘Thirst’ and “Midnight Mass”
The search for faith can be eternally destructive in the wrong hands, which “Midnight Mass” and Thirst explore through their uniquely reborn priests.
“Can you think of a miracle more amazing than that? I mean, cure blindness, sure. Or part the seas, all right. But a second chance? That’s a real miracle…”
Religion is often viewed as a taboo subject matter to explore, especially in the context of horror, but there’s a lot of common ground between the two areas in the context of faith. Neither religion’s sermons or the monsters that lurk in the shadows can have any power without faith and belief. They inherently require a level of buying in and trusting the storyteller and their premise. Faith and religion are no strangers to the horror genre, but it’s especially exciting when these ideas become intrinsically mixed together. There is no shortage of religious horror content, but even Freddy Krueger will admit that belief is fundamental to existence and can be its own super power.
Vampires are a subset of the horror genre that are often linked to religion and faith, and their very mythos boils down to religious iconography like their weakness to crosses and holy water. What makes Chan-Wook Park’s Thirst and Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass such fascinating counterpoints is they both examine the corrupting powers of faith through the conflicted lens of two priests, Sang-hyun and Father Paul, who become vampires and are left to grapple with their piety, albeit from two very different vantage points on humanity.
SPOILERS FOR THIRST AND “MIDNIGHT MASS” FOLLOW…
Thirst is a haunting story about Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho), a Catholic priest who heads into humanitarian work with terminally infected people, only to receive a blood transfusion that turns him into a vampire and sends him down an impossible test of faith. Alternatively, Midnight Mass depicts Crockett Island, a small community who gets mystified by the arrival of an inspirational priest, Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), who brings with him a series of miraculous events. Paul’s backstory and his unbelievable transformation into something greater eerily aligns with the Bible and sets him up to change Crockett Island as he becomes increasingly convinced that he’s meant for something greater.
Sang-hyun and Father Paul (or his true identity, Monsignor Pruitt) head down very similar paths, but ultimately handle their transformations in very different manners. Foundational horror films like The Exorcist, The Devils or more recently, The Witch, examine holy figures who have lost their way, but the priests in Thirst and Midnight Mass are such fascinating figures because they’re forced to entertain their new animalistic urges with their eternal devotion to the cloth. It’s traumatic for a human to take a life for their own, but it’s completely antithetical to a priest’s pact with God. However, what if a priest’s signals get crossed and they view their inhuman cravings as the Will of God moving through them? This question speaks towards how faith is a dangerous power that can corrupt and that no one is worthy of becoming a false prophet. Sang-hyun and Father Paul both arrive at this conclusion, but one gains the clarity to stop himself while the other needs his power stripped away from him.
The circumstances around Sang-hyun’s turn into a vampire in Thirst are left intentionally vague as if it’s some sort of miraculous act of God that will allow him to continue to do good. Sang-hyun rebels against this premise and doesn’t look for a higher purpose. “I feel like I’ve been chosen,” claims Sang-hyun at one moment over his vampiric condition. “I feel like I’ve been given a special role in this life.” Midnight Mass’ Father Paul feels the same, but he forces a Biblical narrative on it all whereas Sang-hyun spends the film trying to figure out his purpose. He doesn’t develop any delusions of grandeur and he views himself as a monster, not a saint. After Sang-hyun’s transformation he refuses to be called “father” anymore because he doesn’t want his vampire status to taint its saintliness. Meanwhile, Father Paul goes so far as to build his transformation into the act of sacrament and the ritual of church.
Unlike Father Paul, Sang-hyun lacks awe upon his turning. Sang-hyun’s first act after learning that he’s a vampire is to try and kill himself. He abandons hope while Father Paul continually leans into how his transformation is a gift from God. It’s a significant detail, but just the fact that Midnight Mass refers to its creatures as Angels speaks towards the built-in level of reverence that’s present in the material. It demands faith and respect whereas Thirst hides in the shadows and avoids adulation. Sang-hyun even considers talking to God to be no different than direct communication with Satan. It invites this comparison while Midnight Mass gets explicit on this front, but is too blind in faith to see it as such.
Midnight Mass more closely looks at how faith can corrupt while Thirst presents faith as a prison and that more freedom can be found through independence than susceptibility to a belief system or martyr figure. The characters in Thirst that lack faith are the ones that wield the most power and don’t fear what awaits them after death. “When you’re dead, you’re dead.” Midnight Mass instead weaponizes faith in an enlightening way where it’s used to justify actions through mob mentality, yet in Thirst, Sang-hyun struggles to commit bad acts and take lives, even after being “chosen.”
It’s like there’s a greater responsibility to do the right thing and not exploit his abnormality. Sang-hyun learns that vampire cells can reverse the effects of the debilitating Emmanuel Virus and he has a group of infected people who are already ready to praise him, yet he doesn’t turn them and relieve them of their pain. He doesn’t view himself to have this right and so it’s fascinating that Father Paul is in a very similar scenario on Crockett Island where he does the exact opposite and decides that the public deserve to share in his glory.
It’s quite telling that both Father Paul and Sang-hyun both receive martyr status, but Sang-hyun treats it like a curse. The public begins to refer to him as “The Bandaged Saint,” but he continually rejects this status rather than turning it into his narrative, like Father Paul does. One of the most important moments in Thirst is that one of Sang-hyun’s final acts before he takes his life is that he intentionally ruins his reputation with his followers so that they can be freed of this false idol. Sang-hyun becomes disgusted not only with himself, but those that idolize him. His powers don’t give him confidence like they do Father Paul, but they only amplify his doubt. Sang-hyun’s perspective is much more akin to Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) and it’s almost as if he were the central character in Midnight Mass rather than someone who experiences such a puritanical power trip like Father Paul. It’s crucial that Midnight Mass explains that Riley Flynn’s time in prison leads to him looking for God in every sacred religious text that he can find, yet he only leaves the experience more convinced that he’s an atheist. Father Paul activates Riley and shows him that he’s “chosen,” but even this isn’t enough to sway his beliefs. He, much like Thirst’s Sang-hyun, embodies the antithesis of Father Paul.
The similarities between Thirst and Midnight Mass become unavoidable in their final acts. Both narratives can use faith to obfuscate the truth and warp intentions, but there’s no hiding from the harsh light of day that shines down as a final judgment for both priests. The conclusions of Thirst and Midnight Mass depict desperate scrambles to survive the rising sun, but it’s during these moments of pure hopelessness that Sang-jyun and Father Paul become the most enlightened and at peace with all of existence. Their journeys mirror contrasting Biblical stories, but they both function as powerful parables. Father Paul and Sang-hyun both perish, because no alternative is possible, but their final moments are with their loved ones, which is all that they wanted from the start. Faith in the eternal, unspoken bond of love is more powerful than any endless belief in religion or monsters.
Both Thirst and Midnight Mass culminate with an affirmation over how dangerous faith can be, especially when it can fester in an echo chamber. Sang-hyun and Father Paul both witness the casualties of what happens when they spread their gospel–whether it’s their beliefs or their inhuman powers–but one recognizes the folly of this whereas the other views himself as a God. They arrive in agreement that no one deserves this power–Midnight Mass even reinforces that God loves everyone equally and that no one is superior to anyone else, regardless of faith, intentions, or their background. However, Thirst’s Sang-hyun arrives at this conclusion on his own, whereas in Midnight Mass it’s forced upon the entirety of Crockett Island. The false idol needs to get torn down whereas Thirst never erects it in the first place.
Faith can be suffocating when it’s manipulated, but when the dust settles in both of these stories the sun never shines more brightly. And in the end, we’re all dust, and to dust we shall return.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
You must be logged in to post a comment.