"Mr. Midnight: Beware the Monsters": Teenage Parnormal Investigators in Singapore

 

Mr. Midnight: Beware the Monsters is a Singaporean tv series about teenage paranormal investigators.  Singapore is one of the more conservative, and homophobic countries in the world, so doubtless there will be no gay characters, but there still may be subtexts.  Besides, who doesn't want to see Singapore?

Scene 1: A lot of people watching a podcast where a masked figure says: "Welcome to Tanah Merah.  All spirits are believed.  All demons are feared.  Gods live in the high areas.  Demons inhabit the low areas."  Must be poorly translated; but Singapore is a former British colony, and the main language is English. 

Switch to a construction site with a billboard ("A brighter future for Tanah Merah").  A bulldozer breaks an ancient urn.  Shadows seep out -- demons from low areas!  They chase a little boy through the fields. They have fields in Singapore?  He bumps into an old guy, who says "It's not safe here."  Yah think?  

Scene 2: A room full of ancient artifacts.  Crotch shot of a sleeping boy. Um...is this one of "those" movies?   The camera slowly moves over his body to a wheelchair and then his laptop, which is playing the tv series Night Patrol: "spooky stories from the heart of spooky Asia."  

The boy -- Tyar ( Idan Aedan) -- rushes downstairs, where Mom and Dad are having breakfast.  "I overslept!  I stayed up late waiting for Ling to finish editing our video for Night Patrol." Mom criticizes him for making videos instead of doing "Normal teenage things."  

"Why didn't you wake me up?"  "We thought you were up.  Something was walking around upstairs."  Aha, the demons from the urn!

A scooter drives up.  Feet turn into Ling, her hair blowing in the wind.  She enters the house and greets everyone -- no Girl of His Dreams vibe, so maybe they're just friends.  

They hear a thud and rush out to the garden to see a dead bird.  Tyar strokes it.  Then they scooter off, and the bird comes back to life!  So Tyar has healing powers?

Scene 3: They scooter through an Asian town: an open-air market, a street all lit with hanging lanterns, a street where all the shop names are in English ("Bloom the Room").  There seem to be more accidents and fights than usual. A dead guy, carrying a bucket and a briefcase, stares at Tyar. Why a bucket?  Maybe in Indonesian folklore, the dead carry buckets?

Scene 4: The Tanah Merah International School, very elegant, with three stories around a central courtyard.  They greet the goofy Westerner Nat (Australian actor Caleb Monk, top photo), who narrates their Night Patrol program.

Scene 5:  After school, Tyar and Ling watch Goofy Nat try out for the cheerleading squad.  A Mean Girl, Zoe, is narrating her own podcast, complaining that Asia is not what she expected: nothing is exotic, except the fruit stinks.  

Whoops, Nat screws up a cheerleading pyramid and breaks his arm!  Tyar and Ling rush to his aid.  An Indonesia guy appears behind him, saying "Sembukhan dia," which I assume means "Use your healing powers, Idiot."  So Tyar grabs his arm and heals him!   Mean Girl Zoe films the whole thing.

The onlookers are shocked.  Ling covers: "Nat just dislocated his shoulder.  Tyar's mom is a nurse, so he knew what to do."  

Scene 6:  The three buds scooter off.  Mean Girl wants to come with them, and hitches a ride on Nat's scooter.  He grins in hetero-horny ecstasy.  Darn, I thought the conservative Singaporeans would excise hetero-horniness along with the gay stuff.

Scene 7:  Jimmy (Samuel Pleitgen), the evil capitalist whose crew uncovered the demon-urn, is ordering a building of priceless historical significance to be torn down.  Meanwhile his hot teenage son Ben (Maxime Bouttier, left) is bored, texting and yelling "Dad, I got to go!"  

Meanwhile, Tyar tells Ling about his new healing powers,  the ghosts he keeps seeing, and "Sembukhan dia," which she says means: "Use your healing powers, Idiot!" in Javanese (one of the languages of Indonesia).   Nat and Mean Girl join them and flirt; Ling rolls her eyes. 

As they watch, the last wall of the ancient, priceless building comes down, emitting a hurricane of red dust. 

They run into a strangely-empty grocery store to escape.  One of the construction guys appears at the door and tells Tyar: "It knows you are awake."  Does it know if he's been good or bad? 

Suddenly the lights flicker, the security gate closes, black goo oozes from the bags of rice, and the potato chips Nat has been eating turn into worms!  Plus the store has turned into an endless maze, and a muscular monster with a face like a Japanese temple guardian is chasing them (played by Danie "The Destroyer" Dharma, the 2016 Mr. Singapore). They grab an unbrella, a squirt gun full of vinegar, and toilet paper to defend themselves. Toilet paper?

The squirt gun works; the monster backs off, and the store reverts to normal, with shoppers and a security guard.

Scene 8:  Night. They enter a curio store to talk to Ling's Dad, whom Tyar calls Uncle Tan-- the old guy from the field in Scene 1, busily painting a demon mask.  He explains that they saw an Oni, a Japanese ogre that feeds on fear.  "For some reason, the spirits are very interested in you, so be careful." Ling stops Tyar from mentioning his other paranormal experiences.  Why?  They're talking to an expert.   

When Dad leaves, Ling explains: "He shouldn't be involved.  We have to figure this out on our own."  

They decide that the best way to research the problem is to invite other people who have had paranormal experiences to call in to their program.  Thus creating a large enough sample size for a regression analysis?  But no one will confide in kids: they need an adult narrator.  Suddenly Tyar sees a mask on the wall -- the mask from the podcast in Scene 1!   So this has all been a flashback. 

Scene 9:  The masked figure, dubbed Mr. Midnight, narrates again: "We all have things that scare us. Tell us what scares you."  Meanwhile, Uncle Tan closes his shop, and glances at the ominous "Dead Write Photo Shop" across the hall.  He clutches the mysterious symbol that has appeared several times, but I didn't think was important enough to mention.

Background: The tv show is based on a series of over 100 children's books, a sort of Asian Goosebumps, by Singaporean writer James Lee.  There are no ongoing characters; readers are invited to send in their own paranormal experiences, which Lee "fleshes out" into stories.  Tanah Merah is a real place in southeastern Singapore. 

Beefcake: Just the bodybuilder in the monster mask and the weirdly out of place drooling over Tyar's fully-clothed body.

Gay Characters: Of course not. But Ben, the Big Bad's son, is mentioned in the episode synopses as part of the gang, so there will be three boys and two girls.  Either Ben or Tyar will stay unattached, and be ripe for a gay reading. 

Heterosexism: Only Nat and Mean Girl's flirtation.

My Grade: In spite of what Mean Girl says, the Singaporean locations and various spirits from Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesian folklore make this series "exotic," and thus more interesting than the paranormal series set in generic American-Canadian suburbs.  B

Spoiler Alert: Big Bad's Son and Mean Girl hook up. Tyar and Nat have a gay-subtext friendship.