Mass

Midnight Mass is pretty good but quite slow, even for me. And I am definitely one who enjoys plodding, methodical movies and TV shows. Also, I don’t care about religious themes very much and the show is perfused with those.

It’s still worth watching, though. And I do like that Mike Flanagan (the director) tends to use the same cast, so you get to experience their range and talent across various shows he makes. Overall, the work feels like a stage play on screen. I enjoyed this but will not be to many people’s taste admittedly.

Recommended, with caveats.

Unseen

What depicts the most terrifying encounter with alien life in fiction?

The aliens in the TV show Colony. They are nearly unseen (and that makes them all the scarier), shipping people off to slave colonies on the moon after having effortlessly taken over the planet. Their goals are unannounced and inscrutable, their power nearly infinite, and resistance against them only succeeds because they don’t care enough to do anything about it — until they do.

And their henchmen (and women) are other humans, part of the Vichy-style world government that they control. And the really terrifying part is that they seem to believe they are helping humanity.