Widow's Bay Review: Apple's Eccentric Horror Comedy Is Worth a Visit

To impress Arthur (Bashir Salahuddin), the writer he's finally coaxed the New York Times to send to Widow's Bay, Tom (Matthew Rhys), the island community's mayor, wants the place to look warm and welcoming. Though it's situated almost 40 miles off the New England mainland, Tom is convinced Widow's Bay could be the next Bar Harbor or, if he lets himself dream, the next Martha's Vineyard. It's quaint, colorful, and picturesque. Sure, the cellular coverage isn't great, but visitors should see that as a chance to get away from the connected world and just relax. Widow's Bay has a long history, too, but that's not necessarily a plus. Stories of priests being eaten by whales and cannibalism hang prominently in the local history museum, where the guide offers an unorthodox take on Widow's Bay's witch hunts: "Great source of pride. We caught 'em, we burned 'em." Still, Tom insists, what town doesn't have a checkered past?

Widow's Bay's past is more checkered than most, however. And there seems to be some darkness lurking in its present, too. The travel reporter's visit coincides with some mysterious tremors and the disappearance of a local fisherman, which is mysterious to all but one resident, Wyck (Stephen Root), an old-timer who insists he was "taken" by the fog. Then there's all the local lore the reporter unearths while talking to residents, stories of those born on Widow's Bay dying shortly, and sometimes not so shortly, after traveling to the mainland. Patricia (Kate O'Flynn), one of Tom's aides, regales Tom with stories of the Boogeyman, a masked killer who terrorized teenage girls in her high school years.

If Tom is a bit skeptical about all this, that's probably because, despite his position of power, he's a relative newcomer, having moved to Widow's Bay for his late wife, an island native. Now a widower, he's remained there for the sake of their now teenaged son, Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick). Still, Tom's skepticism has its limits. He might look askance at all the local superstition, but that doesn't mean he's ever allowed Evan to leave, either.

Created by Katie Dippold, whose past credits include a run on Parks and Recreation (another show about a close-knit oddball-filled community) and the screenplay to The Heat, Widow's Bay mixes comedy and scares, but not always in equal measure, particularly as the series progresses. Early installments of the series' 10-episode first season strike an even balance between the two elements. In the second episode, "Lodging," Tom is forced to prove he doesn't believe in stories of evil spirits by spending the night in a hotel room even the establishment's owner won't enter. As desperate as he is to keep the respect of his constituents, his bravado first cracks, then crumbles, and the episode delivers some scares that make his terror appear fully justified. It's played for awkward laughs until the laughter stops making sense.

8.2

Widow's Bay

at Apple TV

Like

• The fun cast fits perfectly into the spooky setting

Dislike

• The pacing and the humor flag toward the end — but only a bit

An expressive actor with a gift for conveying unspoken shifts in emotion, Rhys is well equipped to play both the episode's comedy and its terror, a skill that serves him well when later episodes dial down the laughs and horror becomes the focus (without entirely shoving lighter moments aside). But Rhys isn't alone. Root has a long track record of shifting gears between comedy and drama (see his work in Barry just for starters) and here brings depth to a character that could easily have been a caricature kook. O'Flynn, whose character joins Tom and Wyck in leading the investigation into what's going on, captures both the exasperating eccentricity and the pathos of a woman who almost seems to go out of her way to make herself difficult to like. It's a quality she's retained from her teen years, as we learn via awkward encounters with the now-grown mean girls who tormented her in high school (though not entirely without reason). Beyond being a story of the supernatural, Widow's Bay also explores what becomes of people who never leave their hometown and settle permanently into a toxic rut. (Both Kevin Carroll and Dale Dickey also lend able support as, respectively, the town's end-of-his-rope sheriff and a chainsmoking town hall gossip.)

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The pilot, directed by Hiro Murai (Atlanta, Mr. & Mrs. Smith), who directs half the series' episodes and serves as executive producer, sets a dark, stylish template followed by the rest of the series, which brings in horror movie ringer Ti West (X, The House of the Devil) for an episode flashing back to the early days of Widow's Bay that puts the regular cast to the side for a history lesson about the town's first mayor and the mainland woman who joins the community as his bride, only to find that her excitement about starting a new life quickly fades as she confronts the harsh reality of her new home — and the dark secrets beneath it.

What exactly those secrets are remains a bit fuzzy thanks to a mythos that's probably vague by design. (It wouldn't make sense to uncover all the mysteries in one season.) How, for instance, the Boogeyman fits into it all is never clarified, beyond further confirming Dippold's John Carpenter fandom. The show owes a debt to Carpenter's The Fog it doesn't really try to hide, but the commitment to exploring the characters facing supernatural threats and the complicated relationships that develop between them feels equally inspired by Stephen King. 

Those influences and impulses don't always fit together neatly. The season's final stretch plays like the last act of a film stretched out to fill more episodes than it really needs. And, though they're not without laughs, it's easy to miss the more leisurely, comedy-forward tone of the early episodes once the plot fully kicks in and the perils mount. But that likely won't bother those who showed up for the horror in the first place or those won over by Widow's Bay's compelling eccentric characters and even more eccentric setting. Why let a little bit of haunting get in the way of a nice getaway at a one-of-a-kind locale?

Premieres: The first two episodes debut Wednesday, April 29 on Apple TV, with subsequent episodes streaming weekly
Who's in it: Matthew Rhys, Kate O'Flynn, Stephen Root
Who's behind it: Katie Dippold
For fans of: Dark stories of small towns, horror unafraid to throw in laughs (and vice versa)
How many episodes we watched: 10 of 10