Everyone's Alone in Widow's Bay
Reflections on Apple TV's horror comedy Widow's Bay
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(Spoilers ahead for episodes from 1 to 7)
“Fuck Cape Cod”
Sometimes, fear pulls out a little giggle out of you. Mostly from relief, like when you realise the hominous figure in your room is just a hung jacket, or when a jump scare takes a few seconds too long to spook you in a film. However, horror can also make you giggle when it digs out the cringe of daily occurences.
“Widow's Bay” does this suspiciously well.
The tv show (airing weekly on Apple TV for maximum audience retention) tells the story of the people of Widow’s Bay, a small New England island where natives are literally bound to their place of origin. We follow Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), mayor of Widow’s Bay, trying to revive the local economy by bringing tourists to a place where people seem to be quite convinced that natives will die if travelling too far away from the island. His collaborators, Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), Rosemary (Dale Dickey) and Dale (Jeff Hiller), are (kind of) on his side, while fisherman Wyck (Stephen Root) fights against him with all his might, convinced that the fog around the land will feed on everyone that is not careful enough. In fact, Tom’s hybris soon backfires when he starts to see the many ways in which the island is actually cursed: the haunted inn, the sea hag, his former wife.
But all the characters, truly, are haunted by their personal ghosts: Patricia cannot escape the fact she was targeted by the so-called girl-obsessed Boogeyman but never attacked, while Wyck is haunted by the death of his friend at sea. Tom’s son, motherless Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick), is also haunted by utter boredom and the desire of seeing the mainland and the world. And this desire of connecting with the outer world is truly what gives way to the series of happenings that turn Tom Loftis into a believer.
The first 7 episodes delve into the island’s lore and more recent past, characterised by serial killers, sudden curfews, disappearances and, mostly, death. It touches on themes of loss and destiny, but also of finding community in the face of fear. Overall, these characters are forced to deal with something that is not only bigger than them, but is also trying to keep them scared and hopeless. In this sense, Tom’s biggest sin is trying to bring hope to the island in the form of tourism (not the best choice, if I say so myself but alas).
Strange Island People
Differently from comparable shows like “From” and “Midnight Mass”, “Widow’s Bay” holds on tight to comedy, and uses it to make its collective of characters shine. Even in the most tense moments, their interactions are so funny they make you forget a monster is luring in the vicinities, mostly because these people have inhabited horror so long nobody remembers how to behave like a normal person. And this seeps into the arena. For example, when Tom finds out he’s being stalked by the sea hag (arguably, the very moment in which he starts to believe), he goes to Wyck for instructions and discovers that the witch wants and will kill him… by sitting on his face. Not stabbing, not choking, but performing deadly, unconsensual oral sex.
“We were often kind of told […] to play just the reality of the situation, and that held us in good stead. You know, to keep the world real, to keep the characters real, to keep the situations and stakes real. And that informed, or freed you, of having to play comedy or horror.”
Everything is funny, in “Widow’s Bay”, from the sea hag’s favourite killing method, to Rosemary’s relentless support of Patricia’s party plans (beware of bowls of crow-blood fruit punch), to the immortal Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater), founding mayor from the 1700s who loves Vienna sausages. The show (writter by “Parks and Recreation” Katie Dippold) wants you to know that these characters, dealing with the cursed island they cannot leave, are normal people like us but weirder—or are they? They lived their whole lives in a place where there’s no internet, no proper phone reception, where kids can only rebel by sneaking out at night and smoking in their parents’ car 100 metres from home. Everyone’s under the scrutiny of their very neighbour, who doesn’t know what proper manners are because most of their friends and fisherman colleagues died at sea or while trying to move to another place. They are bound to always be a bit drunk and not know how to nail a door shut (looking at you, Wyck).
Yet, the most charming part of these protagonists is the fact that they’re utterly isolated, geographically and socially. The intimate reality of them not being able to see the world makes them awkward and almost anti-social, busy trying to negotiate their place in the unstable area of human connection. But their weirdly-timed behaviour evidently thrives in the horrorific land of Widow’s Bay, as it is haunted by… well, itself. Tom, Wyck and Patricia only come together to face the curse and save themselves and the people of the island. It’s impossible for them to have half of a normal interaction outside of the borders of fighting for their lives.
Patricia, in particular, embodies the very way in which the island has made its people fragile in the face of social judgment. When presented with the cursed self-help book, she never questions it because it promises her a simple gift: friends. Nobody believes her when she says she barely escaped the Boogeyman, because it sounds like she’s doing it for attention, while all the other girls died a violent death. Her trauma is her curse, and her punishment is not being able to connect with others in a place that doesn’t really want her to.
But again, I believe that everyone in Widow’s Bay is truly only cursed with the incapacity of being their full self with other people. When Warren eats the mushrooms and decides to sign the pact with the entity, he doesn’t only curse the citizens with the need to literally feed the island, but also forces them to a life of deep and unescapable isolation that closes apparently open borders in the surrounding sea and inside their minds.
Next Steps
So, what’s next for “Widow’s Bay”?
The most believable answer is that, starting tomorrow, we’ll have to deal with the true state and location of Tom’s former wife, and with the fact that the curse, even if lifted, will try and come back. Realistically, the island will fear starvation and try to lure someone else in its net (Evan, maybe?)… if he hasn’t already done so, since we don’t know what happened when Tom came in contact with the island’s demonic entity during his mushroom trip.
Either way, I can’t wait to see what happens and how funnily awkward Tom, Wyck and Patricia will be (just like me when I try to network for job-realted purposes). I haven’t been this excited for a tv show in a long while.
Sara Giudice
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