In a big scary year, Widow’s Bay is still different

Horror has moments. In 2026, the brand is best represented: New blood is ruling the box office through movies like Back rooms and Emotionsregular nouns like Sam Raimi and Damian McCarthy are at the top of their game, and franchises have been running like 28 years later and Resident Evil keep up the good work. But the most interesting thing this year can be found in the world of TV drama: Widow’s Baya series that manages a simple mix of horror and humor, and doubles as a loving tribute to the genre. It’s the kind of combination that doesn’t usually work, which is part of what makes the show so amazing.

Widow’s Bay has just finished its first season – the second has already been confirmed – and it tells a story that at first sounds very derivative. It takes place on a remote island in New England, which is infamous for what the locals believe to be a curse. In the first episode, an eerie fog descends on the town, indicating that a powerful evil is reawakening. See Stephen King’s comparison.

But soon Widow’s BayA different kind of horror/comedy is evident. The show mainly focuses on the island’s bumbling mayor, Tom (Matthew Rhys), who has a misguided ambition to turn Widow’s Bay into a tourist destination to rival Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. This, of course, goes against the whole cursed thing. And the coming fog is the first sign that things aren’t going well for him and his plans, even though Tom ignores the signs every time.

What makes this show work is that, at its core, it’s a serious and serious story. From the first episode, when Tom emphasizes about the traveling writer from The New York Timesthere is a slowly rising fear: a journey through the history of the island which is full of stories of death and, uh, cannibalism; a calendar about wolves that for some reason also contains pictures of car wrecks; the boatman just says that “bad things are happening here.” This show makes you feel as uncomfortable as the islanders.

This emotion only deepens throughout the season, as each episode focuses on a different kind of horror while building on a cursed island. The second part takes place in a famous hotel, filled with a murderer; after that there is a book about preparing a demonic party that leads to a dangerous and unsettling beach meeting. Tom’s assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) is hunted by Jason Voorhees’ villain, and there are some complications to take on a drug trip, complete with time jumps.

It’s because it’s a well-crafted horror story that comedy slips into Widow’s Bay they hit hard. It’s not an easy genre to mix, as producer and presenter Katie Dippold – who knows anything about how horror can be funny – he told me before the show in April. “It can be a good combo, but it can also be a bad combo,” he said, noting that projects that successfully combine the two types are “few and moderate.” As if to prove his point, new Horror Movie that was released this month was toothless.

But unlike many attempts to combine horror and comedy, most of the gags are inside Widow’s Bay they are subtle – and dangerous in their own way. While Tom is looking at the list of games at the inn, he finds a random one Teeth; inside, there is nothing but pliers. When Patricia kills the “boogeyman” who has been stalking her, she keeps her gun on his corpse every time – from the ambulance to the fire – just in case. Even the section titles can be interesting. The last one, where almost everything goes wrong, is called “We hope you enjoyed your time!”

This means that humor not only complements the dangerous nature of the world, it enhances it. And that was the goal all along. “I didn’t want to have a moment where something scary happens and the characters don’t act honestly,” Dippold told me. “If you’re telling the truth, you’re going to get the play eventually. That was a really tough rule.”

This all comes to a head as the show ends its first season. In the end, Tom is put in an impossible position, forced to choose between killing his mysterious secretary Ruth (K Callan) to end the curse for good, or destroying the island without doing anything. In the final episode, after the townspeople and tourists are trapped in shelters by a devastating storm, Tom finds himself in Ruth’s house, and it’s heartbreaking to see him trying to make the right decision. But amid the inconsistency, there are still some funny things, like Ruth’s casual remark that the old boy was “bitten by an animal and became that animal,” or a hilarious instructional video about ritual sacrifice. And this is to be Widow’s Baythings turn out to be more complicated than they seem, leaving Tom with a very difficult task ahead of him.

You don’t have to just take my word for it. Guillermo del Toro recently called a series “provides one of the most impressive forms of horror narrative.” That’s another big compliment. But the truth is that Widow’s Bay has managed to carve out its own path in a crowded space. The last chapter was surprisingly accurate: I enjoyed my time.

_{The first season of Widow’s Bay streaming now on Apple TV.}