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Netflix’s The Midnight Club breaks record for most jump scares

If you are easily spooked, you might want to be careful when browsing Netflix for your next binge-watching experience.

A new horror series on the streaming service, The Midnight Club, has broken the Guinness World Record for the most jump scares in a single episode. There are as many as 21 in the first episode, which is nearly an hour long.

The series was created by American film-maker Mike Flanagan, who also made The Haunting Of Hill House (2018) and Midnight Mass (2021) for Netflix.

Flanagan and his production team were presented with the official certificate marking their “achievement” by a Guinness representative at Netflix’s office in New York City last Thursday.

Flanagan was quick to disclaim that the other nine episodes will not come anywhere close to breaking the record set by the first one.

“Now, I have my name in the Guinness Book of World Records for jump scares, which means next time I get the note, I can say, ‘You know, as the current world record holder for jump scares, I don’t think we need one here’,” he was quoted as saying.

Ironically, he is known for minimising the use of jump scares in his other works, claiming that he does not find it effective in maintaining the tension needed in a horror film or series.

“The thing about a jump scare is it actually dissipates tension, for the most part. The noise you hear right after the scream in the theatre is a laugh, and once the audience is laughing, if you’ve been trying to create tension and foreboding, that’s gone,” he told media outlet The Wrap in an article published on Saturday.

“We had 21 jump scares in (The Midnight Club’s first episode), I don’t think it made the episode scarier at all,” he added.

The Midnight Club stars Friday Night Lights’ (2006 to 2011) Zach Gilford alongside a cast of teenagers, including Iman Benson. It is based on the 1994 Christopher Pike novel of the same name, and is set in a hospice for terminally ill young people.

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