I found the 1996 television movie Fall into Darkness on YouTube. It was adapted from Christopher Pike's novel, Fall into Darkness. In my opinion, the movie starts off boring but gets more interesting during the second half. I like the book better since it has all the most suspenseful parts that were not included in the movie. It also didn't help that the YouTube video has horrible picture quality. However, at least I have now seen the movie.
In response to a comment, I wrote this:
I pretty much just decided that I would watch it tonight no matter what. It really is a snooze at first. The lengthy piano playing, the boring party, etc. Even the climax falls far short of the suspense in Pike's book. Also, the poor quality of the video made my eyes hurt.
The part of the book where the reader finds out what happens to Ann after she goes over the cliff is just really excellent. That was not in the movie. Of course not!
I enjoyed reading Christopher Pike's Spooksville books for younger readers, so I tried watching that television series in 2020. The preview made the show sound so good.
Earlier this year I tried to watch the television series, Spooksville, which is based on Pike's Spooksville series. Pike is my very favorite author of all time. I like the Spooksville books a lot. With difficulty, I made it through several episodes of the Spooksville television series and found it to be boring. Pike's books are great because of his voice. His writing appeals strongly to me. Pike's voice is absent in the television series, so it falls flat. If Pike had actually written the script (and if the actors had been better), then the show could have been really good.
We have had a total of two Pike adaptations, and both were boring. This is unacceptable.
Pike's books were very special to teens like me in the late 1980s. Pike wrote books for us that were written in our vernacular, just as if a teen from the 1980s wrote the books. That's not uncommon nowadays, but books written in the language of teens were a rarity in the 1980s.
I have read some of the articles about the upcoming Netflix series and have checked out some discussions on Reddit. Mike Flanagan's fans are thrilled about this new series. They have made a lot of comments referring to Flanagan's previous works. Fans have most often referred to Flanagan's Midnight Mass Netflix series, probably because both series have "midnight" in their titles. So that I could understand the comments and get a better idea of what to expect from the upcoming series, I watched Flanagan's Midnight Mass series on Netflix this weekend.
As I watched the first two episodes, I felt that they were dragging along too slowly. The content was not uninteresting, but it needed to move faster. I forwarded repeatedly to get through those episodes faster. After I had watched two episodes of Midnight Mass, I felt like The Midnight Club series was doomed to be another boring failed Pike adaptation. I had a really bad feeling about the upcoming series.
Midnight Mass became more interesting in the third episode. I found the series to be pretty engaging from that point on, although it still contained a large amount of what could be considered filler content. While I understood why the church services and the rituals were shown, I felt that they should have been reduced in length considerably. It was unnecessary to spend such a large amount of time on them. I forwarded through many of the scenes.
Midnight Mass also contains an excessive amount of very long character monologues, which is apparently a trademark of Mike Flanagan's work. The monologues are good, but they are a bit much at times. I forwarded through many of them.
Overall, I would say that Midnight Mass is a pretty good series. The last two episodes were quite suspenseful and interesting, so I'm once again feeling hopeful about The Midnight Club.
One article (Mike Flanagan's Latest Midnight Club update is good news) mentions that The Midnight Club won't have as many monologues as Flanagan's other works and that it will have more scares. I certainly hope so.
I decided to reread The Midnight Club book to refresh my memory. It is not one of my favorite Pike books. When I reviewed The Midnight Club here, one person took issue with my opinion of the book. They didn't like that I said that the book depressed me. Um, it did, and I can't help that.
I have read many comments in the last few weeks on Reddit where people say how much they loved the book, The Midnight Club. For me, it is a below average Pike book that is near the bottom. Pike has written 84 books. Of those 84 books, there are only around 10 of those books that I like about the same or less than The Midnight Club. The Midnight Club book falls low on my list of Pike's books, because I find it depressing. The short stories embedded within the book are great, but I do not like the main plot of the book.
After I finish reading The Midnight Club again, I'm going to try to quickly reread every Pike book that is used in the Netflix series. The goal is to finish all of them by Friday when the series drops. When I watch the shows, I want to have the books' plots fresh in my memory.
101. "The Final Chapter"
102. "The Two Danas"
103. "The Wicked Heart"
104. "Gimme a Kiss"
105. "See You Later"
106. "Witch"
107. "Anya"
108. "Road to Nowhere"
109. "The Eternal Enemy"
110. "Midnight"
The episodes marked in blue are based on Pike books of the same name. I have read far enough into The Midnight Club to see that "The Two Danas" is based on one of the short stories featured in The Midnight Club. That short story features a girl named Dana who is cloned by the devil. Both Danas are able to experience both lives at the same time. The first Dana lives her normal life, and the second Dana parties. Both Danas experience both lives simultaneously: one in person and the other in her mind. As can be expected, this doesn't work out well for Dana.
As of this writing, I'm getting quite excited about the new series and hope that it does indeed meet my expectations. I hope Mike Flanagan did justice to Pike's works. Mainly, I just want the series not to be boring. No more boring Pike adaptations, please.
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