Inspired by “Carrie” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” Haley Z. Boston explains how she explores the fear of marrying the wrong person through a horror lens.

Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen exclusive first look: Duffers-approved creator unveils wedding horror story

Inspired by "Carrie" and "Rosemary's Baby," Haley Z. Boston explains how she explores the fear of marrying the wrong person through a horror lens.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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January 27, 2026 10:00 a.m. ET

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Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin on 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen'. Credit:

Courtesy of Netflix

- The Duffer Brothers' first show post-*Stranger Things* is *Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen*, created by Haley Z. Boston.

- Camila Morrone stars as Rachel, who joins her fiancé at his family's vacation home for their wedding when strange events occur.

- "It just felt so natural to me that you would explore the fear of commitment and the fear of marrying the wrong person through a horror lens."

After the dramatic conclusion to Netflix’s global monolith *Stranger Things*, the architects Matt and Ross Duffer will release three new shows on the streaming platform this year through their production company, Upside Down Pictures. With these projects — *Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen*, *The Boroughs*, and the animated *Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85* — however, the brotherly duo are less hands on.

Matt previously told **, “We're finding talent and creatives that we deeply respect and helping them get the show off the ground, mentoring them, teaching them about what we've learned, the mistakes we've made so hopefully they don't make the same mistakes. That's sort of our role as far as that's concerned.”

*Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen*, from newly crowned showrunner Haley Z. Boston, will be the first of the trio when it arrives this March.

Adam DiMarco as Nicky Cunningham on 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen'.

Courtesy of Netflix

Karla Crome as Nell, Gus Birney as Portia, Jeff Wilbusch as Jules on 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen'.

Courtesy of Netflix

The title says it all: Something very bad will indeed happen. “It would be false advertising if not,” Boston says of her eight-episode limited series. “Something bad happens in every show, right? We need the conflict, but the special thing about this show, and what I think the title offers, is we're gonna keep you guessing on what the very bad thing is.”

Camila Morrone, the model and Emmy-nominated actress from *Daisy Jones & the Six*, stars as Rachel Harkin, as seen in EW’s exclusive first-look photos. She road-trips midwinter with her fiancé, Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco of *The White Lotus* and *Overcompensating*), to his wealthy family’s secluded vacation home, where they will be married in five days time.

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Jennifer Jason Leigh portrays Nicky’s mother, Victoria Cunningham, while Jeff Wilbusch (Jules), Karla Crome (Nell), Gus Birney (Portia), Ted Levine (Dr. Cunningham), and Sawyer Fraser (Jude) play some of the key in-laws.

Each episode tracks a single day around this private ceremony, and each day Rachel’s paranoia and superstition, fed by an accelerating number of strange occurrences, ramps up. Boston describes the show in relation to *Carrie* (her favorite movie of all time) and *Rosemary’s Baby*. If the former explored a teenage girl becoming a woman and the latter centered on a woman becoming a mother. Boston then asked herself, “What's the horror version of a woman becoming a wife?”

Jennifer Jason Leigh as Victoria on 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen'.

Courtesy of Netflix

Karla Crome as Nell, Camila Morrone as Rachel, Gus Birney as Portia in 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen'.

Courtesy of Netflix

The entire structure of the miniseries is designed to keep the audience off balance, down to the way it’s shot. Boston references one particular dress-fitting scene with Rachel’s in-laws in which lead director Weronika Tofilska conjures a hypnotic visual. The constant state of dread from *The Vanishing* (1988), the familial dynamics from *The Celebration* (1998), the comedic character drama from *The White Lotus* (2021), and the work of filmmaker Jonathan Demme (*The Silence of the Lambs*, *Rachel Getting Married*) were all on the proverbial mood board, while the house itself is constructed like a maze.

“We wanted you as the audience to feel the paranoia and the fear that Rachel is feeling,” Boston explains. “Even when she's not in the scene, we were always thinking about constructing the show in terms of her discomfort. It really represents how it feels to walk into a house for the first time and meet your significant other's family. There's all this lore that you are not aware of and you're suddenly stepping into it.”

When you meet Boston, there’s a striking physical resemblance between her and the central character of her series, Rachel: dark, wavy hair, fair skin, rings, tattoos (including a *Carrie* one). It’s not a coincidence. According to the showrunner, it was Morrone who came up with the idea to model Rachel off her creator.

Adam DiMarco as Nicky Cunningham, Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin on 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen'.

Courtesy of Netflix

Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin on 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen'.

“I relate to Rachel from a kind of vibe perspective, the essence of Rachel, but I am actually much more [like] Nicky, who comes from this loving family and has this ideal perspective on marriage,” she says. “So I think I'm both of them and I've put them in conflict with each other.”

On a lighter note, Boston adds, “It's really just therapy for me.”

Starting out as a production assistant before writing for shows like *Brand New Cherry Flavor* and *Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities*, Boston formed the beginnings of *Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen* in 2020 through a series of emails she sent to herself. The inspiration came from her parents, who Boston describes as having “a really lovely marriage” and to this day are still in love.

Zlatko Burić on 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen'.

Courtesy of Netflix

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“When I was a kid, my mom said to me, ‘You can do whatever you want in your life, just make sure you don't marry the wrong person.’ That's a lot of pressure to put on a child,” Boston says. “So I sort of grew up with this thing looming over me where I knew that it was possible to have lifelong partnership and the fear of marrying the wrong person was such a presence. So as I was approaching the age of 30 and everyone's getting married, it just felt so natural to me that you would explore the fear of commitment and the fear of marrying the wrong person through a horror lens.”

The horror aspect of the show is the surprise. When we already know from the jump that something very bad is going to happen, Boston seeks to keep the reveal hidden to stoke the fear. Is there a supernatural element? Is Nicky’s family hiding something? Is there something lurking in the woods?

“I can't tell you,” Boston comments. “But Rachel's superstitious. So there is a bit of this groundwork of someone who is aware that there is maybe something cosmic going on. The show is about soulmates and ‘how do you know if someone's your soulmate?’ What is a soulmate? And it comes up, whether that's fate or whether it's something that you create. So I'm just gonna leave that there and you'll have to watch it to find out."**

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