We’re very close to the arrival of Widow’s Bay, the rare horror series from sci-fi standout Apple TV, and a tale that takes us to an island off the coast of New England where, it’s said, “bad things happen.”
Situating frights on an island is a well-worn offshoot of the classic locked-room horror story—something you can also achieve by plunging your characters into, say, a mountain hotel in the middle of winter or a haunted ship in space or a distant ocean. Without access to an escape route, or with outside interference like a sudden storm, the hapless characters must fight to survive whatever monsters or ferocious killers are chasing them down.
So while we wait for Matthew Rhys and Stephen Root to whisk us away to Widow’s Bay—which looks like it leans on very dry small-town humor in addition to bumps in the night—here are 10 of our favorite movies that take place on cursed islands.
Who Can Kill a Child? (also known as Island of the Damned, 1976)
Enjoying one last vacation before their third child is born, an English couple decides to rent a tiny boat and visit an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. When they arrive, they realize why they were warned against the side trip: it’s populated entirely by children, all of whom are infected with a violent impulse that’s inspired them to slaughter all the local adults. Next stop: world domination… after eliminating their unwanted visitors, that is.
Bloody New Year (1987)
The Grand Island Hotel was once the best place to spend New Year’s Eve—until the arrival of 1960, when partygoers were met with some extremely freaky sci-fi interference. A couple of decades later, a group of teens escaping a gang of bullies at a carnival (as you do) hop a boat that takes them to the island, where the hotel still stands, abandoned with all its festive holiday decorations.
You may not guess exactly what’s caused this place to be so off-kilter until Bloody New Year presents its own explanation, but you’ll get all kinds of treats (zombies, a mid-summer snowstorm, a staircase banister that comes to life) to go with any ill-fated attempts to flee.
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
Forget the tepid remake that arrived, uh, last summer. The real screamer is the vintage I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel. It sees Jennifer Love Hewitt’s final girl once again facing a masked menace after she and her roommate, played by R&B star Brandy, win a free trip to the Bahamas after (incorrectly) answering a trivia question as part of a (fake) radio contest.
They arrive in paradise and quickly face such perils as an encroaching tropical storm, a front desk clerk played by Re-Animator’s Jeffrey Combs, voodoo, and Jack Black’s satirical (or is it?) performance as the resort’s resident weed dealer. The bodies start dropping, Agatha Christie-style, as someone sets out to remind Julie she’s still on the hook for that thing she did two summers ago.
The Wicker Man (1973)
A small plane will carry you to Summerisle, a picturesque community located off the coast of Scotland. There, you will find the most delicious apples you’ve ever tasted, cultivated using a time-tested combination of agricultural wizardry and pagan rituals. The drawbacks, of course, include locals who are brazenly unfriendly despite requesting your presence—and the possibility of being roasted alive to ensure a plentiful harvest.
Enys Men (2022)
Set in the very Wicker Man-y year of 1973, this experimental folk horror tale follows a volunteer’s increasingly trippy time on a small island off the Cornish coast. She’s there to document cliffside plant life, and this hunk of craggy, salt-sprayed landscape is supposed to be otherwise deserted.
Made during the pandemic with a low budget but sky-high creativity, Enys Men toys with the passage of time as the red-jacketed protagonist has strange encounters with people who shouldn’t be there—as well as a standing stone that’s been looming for centuries, a radio that’s seemingly transmitting from another dimension, and a lichen that starts growing in peculiar places.
Hour of the Wolf (1968)
On Baltrum, an island off the coast of Germany, a painter and his pregnant wife (Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, frequent collaborators of writer-director Ingmar Bergman) find their quiet rural existence start to fracture when the man’s memories and visions cross over into real life. This is exacerbated by their increasingly intrusive castle-dwelling neighbors, who insist on their attendance at frequent parties.
The psychological breakdown eventually turns violent, and while there’s not really a werewolf in Hour of the Wolf, as the title might suggest, fairy-tale horrors lurk just beneath the surface—as is the idea that this uneasy relationship was probably doomed from the start.
Zombi 2 (also known as Zombie, 1979)
One of Italian horror master Lucio Fulci’s standout films, Zombi 2 is primarily known as “the one where the zombie fights a shark,” but also “the one where the woman hiding behind the door gets a giant splinter through her eye and you see it in close-up.”
Needless to say, it’s a gruesome delight. It should also make anyone think twice about blundering to the Caribbean to check up on a relative whose boat has just drifted all the way to New York City… with a hungry ghoul aboard. The island you seek just might be in the throes of a disease that’s actually a voodoo curse designed to make the dead rise from their graves and go on the attack. Also, did we mention those shark-infested waters?
Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)
Another Italian master directed this classic giallo, and let’s just say if Mario Bava invites you to a weekend getaway, you should probably think twice. Agatha Christie’s influence is felt once again as a group of characters as gorgeous as they are unlikable gather on a posh private island, intent on pressuring a scientist to sell his formula for a new kind of industrial resin.
If your eyes glazed over at that setup, remember this is Bava we’re talking about. That formula is valuable enough to kill for, after all. And while the story eventually begins to follow a familiar “guests being picked off one by one, with no way to contact the mainland” scenario, it’s also dripping in the kind of eye candy and lurid excess Bava is rightfully known for.
Isle of the Dead (1945)
Arnold Böcklin’s evocative painting of the same name, a favorite of producer Val Lewton, inspired this film starring Boris Karloff, who was at the height of his horror fame 10 years after The Bride of Frankenstein. It’s set during the Balkan Wars and invokes Greek mythology in its tale of an island maybe (probably) haunted by the dreaded revenant creature known as a “vorvolaka.”
When bodies start dropping, there’s disagreement over whether a plague or the supernatural is to blame—with enough finger-pointing and botched burials to make you doubly certain never to set foot on this sinister island’s shores.
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1996)
There are several big-screen versions of H.G. Wells’ influential sci-fi novel out there, including the 1932 take starring Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi and the 1977 one with Burt Lancaster and Michael York. For maximum camp, however, navigate your ship straight to the notoriously troubled (and it shows) 1996 production, which stars Marlon Brando as a corpulent mad scientist obsessed with breeding human-animal hybrids.
David Thewlis is the baffled outsider who happens upon Moreau’s freaky island-lab after a plane crash in the Indian Ocean; Val Kilmer plays Moreau’s increasingly unhinged lieutenant; and Ron Perlman and Fairuza Balk play just some of Moreau’s genuinely distressing creations.
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