Everyone loves a good jump scare, right? Well, Mike Flanagan, creator of the new Netflix adaptation, The Midnight Club, says a few things about them. Regardless of how he feels, he’s attached to them forever after breaking the Guinness World Record for most jump scares in a TV episode. Keep reading to find out more!
Netflix released another piece of their “Netflix and Chills” line-up. Mike Flanagan’s The Midnight Club is a young-adult horror series that is definitely scary. This doesn’t shock us, given Flanagan also worked on Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, which I think spooked us all. Watch the trailer below if you haven’t seen it yet!
The hit new series is based off of the 1994 novel of the same name by Christopher Pike and follows a group of terminally ill teenagers in Rotterdam Home, where they gather at midnight to tell spooky stories. Obviously, by the trailer you saw, it isn’t just the stories they tell that are spooky.
During the show’s premiere, Flanagan managed to pack 21 separate jump scares into a single episode breaking the Guinness World Record for most scripted jump scares in a single television episode.
During The Midnight Club‘s New York Comic Con panel, a Guinness World Record official presented the award to Flanagan and Co.
What Did Flanagan Have To Say About It?
According to Variety, Flanagan told a reporter during a press conference,
“This is particularly important to me because I hate jump scares and I think they are the worst. My whole career, people have been like, put more jump scares in, and do them faster!”
Variety
Does anyone else feel like Flanagan does amazing jump scares? Haunting of Hill House really got me! Can you imagine 21 jump scares in one episode?
Flanagan continued,
“The notes were already coming in of, ‘time to do jump scares.’ So I thought, we’re going to do all of them at once and, if we do it right, a jump scare will be rendered meaningless for the rest of the series and we’ll just destroy it and kill it, finally, until it’s dead.”
Variety
But this definitely didn’t “kill it.” In fact, according to Flanagan, they wanted more. He carried a dislike for jump scares as a concept, but Flanagan came up with an idea.
“Now I want to make sure that it was pinned to me as much as it is to the show and Netflix and all of us who have inflicted this on everyone, now I have my name in the Guinness Book of World Records for jump scares, which means the next time I get the note I can say, ‘As the current world record holder in jump scares, I can tell you I don’t think we need one here.’ And that’s my whole strategy.”
Variety
The Midnight Club is out on Netflix October 7. Make sure to watch it!
Looking for more spooky bookish content? Click here to read about the latest Stephen King adaptation released on Netflix!