Widow’s Bay: Flawed Horror Comedy

Widow’s Bay Strikes A Balance Between Its Genres

Widow’s Bay is a horror sitcom. I watched the first three episodes, and I was struck by how it’s a perfect encapsulation of both genres. Each episode starts with a sitcom plotline and then, by the end, has become a horror scenario. And the most impressive part is that it’s good at being both. I laughed often and was spooked out.

This is, of course, a highly subjective thing to say. Horror and comedy are the most subjective genres, but Widow’s Bay uses some of my favorite tropes in both. It’s very much a modern comedic creation stylistically and made by horror fans. And since the show likes to flip genres so much, we may as well explore specifics one at a time.

Widow’s Bay Makes You Laugh Before Screaming

The comedy comes from two sources: incompetent people being incompetent in silly ways and absolutely dry delivery. Our main character is the mayor, and all he wants to do is make his tiny, tiny seaside town of Widow’s Bay popular with tourists. Sadly, the people already living there hate change, are very superstitious, and—most importantly—do not take any of his plans as seriously as he does. He is constantly trying to not explode in people’s faces, and yet you can never be too mad at him. He’s just trying to help.

His plans also have one other small issue: the island is “waking up” and is haunted by possibly hundreds of different ghosts and curses, or some cosmic nightmare force is controlling it all. That’s how the comedy/slice-of-life scenarios are so able to shift into effective horror. One moment he’s making a bet with people that he’ll stay in a hotel for a night so that people won’t scare away tourists with spooky stories, and the next he’s in a crawl space and I had to pause the video for a moment to compose myself I was so scared. A kid’s show would’ve had amusing supernatural hijinks get in the main character’s way—this show is totally willing to kill or hurt characters with its frights.

Threats Feel More Real Than Some Horror Shows

The issues with the series—and they become impossible to ignore—sadly cannot be disconnected from the excellent genre mashup. While the butt of a lot of jokes is the mayor, a ton of the remaining are at women’s expense. It got a little too skewed for my liking, not making fun of enough specific male characters, and the lampshading in episode two didn’t mitigate things. The mayor actively hates a waitress because she can’t get orders right. There’s an assistant whose commentary on other people’s sexism is dismissed pretty dang quickly. And more than one elderly woman is treated as a nuisance by the narrative. The supernatural rapist in episode three is also an elderly woman. The show does make a point that the island had witch trials—the historical society seems actively proud of it—so maybe the show is trying to commentate on sexism, but I didn’t get that impression.    

The impression I get is that the show wants to be a long-form horror mystery series with an absurdist sensibility. The plotlines with the priest certainly suggest that Widow’s Bay has plans. The ending of episode three even has a slight shift in how the mayor treats the supernatural that smells of monster hunting. But I hope those impressions are wrong. I hope episode four maintains the structure. Because Widow’s Bay might just be lightning in a bottle, if it keeps to the magic of the horror sitcom. Fix the issues, keep the great acting, and I’d watch seasons of this mayor putting out metaphorical fires.

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