‘Widow’s Bay’ movie review: Matthew Rhys delivers Apple’s creepy, intriguing, warm and ineffective horror comedy

At the end of a very strange dinner punctuated by flashing lights and ominous warnings, a travel writer (Bashir Salahuddin) exploring an island village diagnoses what he sees as a problem with its marketing. “I see what’s going on here,” he says. “You don’t want to be Nantucket. You want to be Salem.” “It’s a beautiful city,” he added, bowing. “I don’t need this trick.”

It’s well-meaning advice, and exactly the praise that Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), the man he’s been desperately trying to show him a good time, was hoping to hear. However, at this point, we and Tom understand that he is completely wrong. this He is Beautiful city. But its horror is no gimmick. It’s the real deal. In a TV landscape full of small, quirky villages, this is the best reason to visit Widow’s BayApple’s interesting, uneven mix of Pawnee-style comfort and Derry-esque chills.

Even before the island reveals its supernatural hand, it exerts a powerful pull. With its cute clapboard buildings, a fresh breeze you can practically taste thanks to Christian Springer’s crisp photography, and an attractive lack of old-fashioned Wi-Fi, Widow’s Bay, located 40 miles off the New England coast, feels like a refreshing antidote to detached modernity.

If its residents seem a little offbeat, that’s part of the charm – this is a kind of isolated enclave where a chain-smoking gossip (Rosemary Dale Dickey) will tell you exactly which of her neighbors is suffering from syphilis or crushing debt, and a saltwater fisherman (Stephen Rootwick) can trace his lineage on this rock for centuries. And while Tom may be desperate to downplay the city’s surprisingly dismal history (people didn’t… Immediately He turns to cannibalism during the deadly storm of 1786, insisting to a visitor: “It took four days!”, so this only adds to his sense of character. No wonder he imagines this place will become the next Martha’s Vineyard.

But it soon becomes clear that Widow’s Bay is more than just an oddity. It is a constant among the locals that the entire place is cursed: monsters roam its forests, mysterious storms rock its coasts, and legend has it that anyone born here can never leave. Mainlanders like Tom might be more skeptical of these claims (and to be fair, he’s not wrong in pointing out that “taken by the fog” is not the correct statement). only A logical explanation for the disappearance of a sailor with a drinking problem), but the evidence speaks for itself. By the end of the first episode, it’s clear that something supernatural is going on here. By the middle of the ten-part season, it’s clear that Tom has to do it Something To confront the curse, lest it destroy not only his own citizens but all the tourists he insisted on luring here, in “Mayor of… Jaws“-level of denial.

At its best, Widow’s Bay It highlights the blurry line between comedy and horror. Premiere directed by Hiro Murai (Atlanta), bleeds from first to last as Tom first tries to shake off the island’s ugly history (“But he killed teenage girls. You’re in your 40s,” he reasoned with his assistant, Kate O’Flynn’s Patricia, still haunted by her youthful conflict with a serial killer) and then confronts the ultimate, undeniable truth. That it’s not always easy to determine what’s creepy-weird and what’s funny-weird is part of the fun.

My favorite was the Sam Donovan-led Patricia-centric fourth episode, which zigzags a line between the pathos of her loneliness, the awkward comedy of her efforts to make amends, and the genuine horror when she realizes what she’s been driven to do. It’s also one of the few sequels that isn’t Tom-centric, and speaks to the possibility of any future seasons continuing to flesh out the rest of the group.

But if Widow’s Bay The film excels at setting a tone of pervasive weirdness, aided by directors like Ty West and Andrew Young, but it’s less reliable at turning that tension into catharsis. Despite a set that wouldn’t look out of place in a Mike Schur sitcom, the series rarely rises above the level of dark entertainment; I smiled a lot but never laughed. While it has a few solid shakes, many of them lean towards the classic genre like He – she or Halloweennone of it is bad or surprising enough to leave a lasting mark. With episodes lasting about 40 minutes, the lack of payoff left me frustrated more than once.

In fairness, those who enjoy the series’ relaxed, creepy atmosphere may find the relaxed pace of the storytelling to be a blessing rather than a drawback – giving them more time to enjoy it all. Even with my minor complaints, I found myself reluctant to give up this island completely. This travel writer also commented on tom, the real secret sauce of Widow’s Bay It is the people.

Rhys provides some first-rate physical comedy as Tom, a coward who tries and fails to hide his bumbling race with bright smiles and believable tones. Root is delightfully salty as an old-timer who has long since grown impatient to deal with this kind of nonsense. A large cast of comedic actors (the most interesting of which I’m asked not to spoil here) add to the sense that anything could and does happen. Widow’s Bay. For my money, the breakout performance is O’Flynn’s performance. Tragically earnest but painfully awkward, Patricia seems like the kind of bloated outcast that Carrie White might have imagined growing up under less fiery circumstances.

These are not people I would necessarily want to live with day to day, let alone take shelter with for days on end in the event of a demonic flood or a masked immortal killer threatening to demolish the entire people forever. But despite the dire warnings from the likes of Wick and Tom in the end, they make Widow Bay a destination worth visiting – and perhaps again and again, for years and years to come.