Critic Reviews

Widow’s Peak is rich and wonderful. Grownup, funny, scary, true – Mare of Easttown meets Schitt’s Creek, but with something else that makes it singular.

With its diverse elements coming together like lightning in a bottle, Widow’s Bay is a destination well worth visiting.

A charmingly ghoulish saga about a locale beset by the sins of the past. It’s also, to date, the best new show of the year.

Another distinctive addition to Apple TV’s impressive library that delivered several agonizing jump scares, loads of laughs, and intrigued until the last second of the 10 episode season.

That awkward, comedic, and suspenseful tension may be a lot to get through, but it's designed to ensure we get the most we can from the horror genre. At this point, it can hardly be denied that Apple TV has mastered a rare sort of art.

It is truly unlike anything else on TV, a wild swing of tonal shifts that works because it commits so fully to both halves of the equation.

Widow’s Bay plays like a mixtape of the Master of the Macabre’s work, compiling stock horror archetypes and scenarios before running them through a mondo bizarro filter.

It takes a group of such experience to handle the series’ delicate balancing act, which sustains both heart-pounding suspense and wry humor for impressively long stretches of time. .... Widow’s Bay may not make the best tourist destination, but I’d happily make a return trip.

An absolutely stellar supporting cast, including Stephen Root, Jeff Hiller, Dale Dickey, Kingston Rumi Southwick and, especially, Kate O’Flynn, perfectly balances the comedy and the horror. Both are earned. The scares are legitimate, and sometimes the look on Rhys’ face when he is processing something hilariously dumb is just laugh-out-loud funny.

Dippold and lead director Hiro Murai unleash the comedy version of Rhys in many wonderful ways. Tom is so obviously in over his head, and so easily panicked, that it's hard to hate him even as he keeps putting other people at risk.