Apple TV’s new horror series is scarier because it’s also hilarious

Kate O’Flynn views comedy and horror as “kind of the same thing.” Both are at their best when they surprise — a laugh or a scare that comes out of nowhere hits the hardest. That’s why, for the star of the new horror-comedy hybrid Widow’s Bay, mixing up the genres makes perfect sense — they heighten each other. “You’re never on steady ground,” she says. “Your guard is down, and you’re vulnerable to a laugh or a cry or a scream. It’s all up for grabs.”

Widow’s Bay, which starts streaming on Apple TV on April 29th, tells the story of the titular island, which sits off the coast of New England. It has a rustic small-town charm and also happens to very definitely be haunted. There have been countless myths and ghost stories since the town’s founding, along with a possible curse in which anyone born on the island can’t leave without dying. The town’s mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), is intent on revitalizing the island and turning it into a tourist destination to rival Martha’s Vineyard. But in doing so he ignores the very clear signs that something is wrong. In the first episode, for instance, a sinister fog rolls into town, but all Tom can think about is a visiting New York Times travel writer.

The show is the brainchild of showrunner Katie Dippold, who has a long track record in comedy, writing episodes for Mad TV and Parks & Recreation and movies like The Heat and the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot. She’s always been a fan of projects that manage to successfully mix the genres — the problem is that they’re rare. “Oftentimes I’ll see a new horror-comedy and I don’t get either the comedy or the horror,” she explains. She cites An American Werewolf in London as a personal favorite that nailed the mix. “I think about it all of the time because it’s terrifying,” she says, “but then they really swing hard for the comedy.”

With Widow’s Bay, her goal was to ensure that the two genres “can feed into each other, and never let the comedy undercut the story or the tension. I never wanted to have a moment where something scary happens and the characters don’t react truthfully. If you’re truthful, then eventually you’ll find the comedy. That was the very hard rule and challenge of this.”

Over the course of its 10 episodes, Widow’s Bay morphs almost into a horror anthology of sorts. There’s the overarching story of the town and its sordid history, but each episode explores different subgenres tied to specific characters and storylines. In one episode, Tom gets a crash course on all of the various curses that have befallen Widow’s Bay when he stays at a haunted hotel where time moves differently. Later, there are episodes that evoke everything from Midsommar to Friday the 13th to a whole lot of Stephen King. That means lumbering killers, sea witches, bizarre rituals, and, yes, even a killer clown at one point. As things progress, and the island’s mysteries deepen and the tension becomes heightened, Dippold says that the comedic elements are designed in a very specific way. “Hopefully it can feel relatable and like a relief,” she says.

For the cast, the task was similar: approach the hybrid nature of the show in a way that felt cohesive and complementary. And doing that, they tell me, mostly meant not thinking about the genres as separate things. “I think Katie built a very real world with very real people with very real problems,” says Rhys. “The biggest thing is to not get in the way of it. It relieves you of the pressure of playing any genre.” Stephen Root, who plays Tom’s rival, a local fisherman who very much does believe in curses, adds, “It’s not playing comedy, or playing drama, or playing horror. It’s playing the reality of the situation and letting it unfold. And hopefully the audience will follow you because they’re interested in the characters.”

Dippold believes that having a background in comedy can prepare you to do great work in horror. After all, two of the genre’s most acclaimed directors of the last few years — Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger — started out in sketch comedy before making films like Nope and Weapons. “There’s a sense of play to those movies,” Dippold says. “I don’t mean that the scary parts are funny. I just really enjoy when horror has a sense of fun to it.”

Ultimately, the goal of both genres is the same: to get a visceral reaction from the audience. They often go about it differently, but the results can be nearly identical. As O’Flynn notes, “When I’m scared, I laugh manically. It comes out as laughter. I think it’s this tightrope of hysteria.” And for Dippold, when it came to crafting the world and story of Widow’s Bay, it wasn’t necessarily all that different from her previous work.

“When I see a good scene in a horror movie in a theater I always laugh,” she says. “It’s almost like a well-constructed joke. Writing a good joke and crafting a good horror scene are two very different things, but there’s a similar energy.”