In the last ten years or so, there has been an underlying trend of numerous children’s horror franchises making the leap from book series to the big screen. With the first film starring the super charismatic Jack Black, the most notable examples areR.L Stine’sGoosebumpswhich was released in 2015, andGoosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween,which was released in October 2018.
In August of the following year, a theatrical version of Alvin Schwartz’s work,Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,premiered in theaters and was a box office hit, grossing over one hundred million dollars. That said, another children’s horror series,Mr. Midnight: Beware the Monsters, has successfully been adapted into a thirteen-episode series that is now officially streaming on Netflix.
Jim Aitchison, better known by his pen name of James Lee, has been gaining popularity with his book seriestitledMr. Midnight.First published in Singapore during the mid to late 1990s and with over one hundred different volumes released since then, the best-selling children’s horror novels have been translated into other languages like traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Indonesian, Malay, and Burmese.
Each book is released every two to four months and contains two different stories, each following a different group of friends who find themselves in spine-chilling, hair-raising situations. Some of these fearsome adventures include being surrounded by creepy shadow-like monsters in an abandoned movie theater, getting mysteriously trapped on the symbolic 13th floor of a high-rise building, and being stalked by a once innocent but now threatening clown puppet.
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The Mysterious World of Mr. Midnight
With different eerie scenarios explored throughout the ongoing book series, the Beach House Productions Media Company decided to return Mr. Midnight to its geological roots for the recentlydebuting Netflix adaptationand film the entire first season in the countries of Indonesia and Singapore. Set within the small, gothic-like town of Tanah Merah, Singapore,Mr. Midnight: Beware The Monstersfollows a group of adventure-seeking teenagers who not only start solving a string of supernatural dilemmas plaguing their town but also document their scary adventures on an online blog called, you guessed it, Mr. Midnight.
The initial four main characters that make up the intrepid group are Tyar, played by Idan Aedan, and his cousin, Ling, who’s portrayed by Chen Yixin. Nat, Tyar’s energetic best friend, is also a mainstay throughout the show, and the character is brought to life by Caleb Monk. Rounding out the group is Nikki Dekker, who stars as Zoe, a foreign exchange student from England who quickly becomes friends with the three persons previously named.
Other notable cast members include Maxime Bouttier, who plays Ben, Zoe’s slow-building love interest, and Lim Yu-Beng, who plays Tyar’s spiritually inclined Uncle Tan. Maxime Buottier starred in therecently released,Ticket to Paradisestarring George Clooney and Julia Roberts and Yu-Beng Lim was inBlood and Treasure, a 2019 Paramount Plus series.
While most cast members involved withMr. Midnight: Beware The Monstersare not quite recognizable to American audiences just yet, each actor and actress certainly brings a unique presence that is felt throughout the show’s span. If this mythologically injected universe of Tanah Merah was not brought to life by these new faces, the one-of-a-kind fresh feel that this show currently holds would not get across to the viewers like it is now.
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Shamans against Demons
As the audience progresses in the series, stakes are raised when Tyar learns he is a dukun, a term from the Indonesian language meaning shaman or a spirit medium. While he slowly learns how to control and wield these new-found powerful magical arts, construction work being done in the fields of Tanah Merah unknowingly helps a terrifying demon called the Hutan Lahir break free from a binding spell that Tylar’s mother put on the vengeful spirit many years ago.
With these two opposite forces seemingly on a collision course throughout the season and with a surprising number of twists and turns that make you second-guess every character, the climactic conclusion is something you wouldn’t want to miss. Not only that, but the final episode ofMr. Midnightends on a cliffhanger that teases much more to come for teenage Tyar and his group ofparanormal-reporting friends.
As of this writing, though, nothing has been confirmed or denied by any of the cast members, Beach House Productions, or even Netflix regarding any possibility of the second season ofMr. Midnight: Beware The Monsters. But with James Lee’s preteen-aimed horror garnering so much overwhelming support that it’s being cited as both the SingaporeanGoosebumpsand Asia’sanswer toHarry Potter, the haunting tales of Tanah Merah should have no problem making a return to the Netflix streaming platform.
