Boston

You might expect a screenwriter working in the horror genre to be relatively difficult to scare, but Haley Z. Boston, the creator and executive producer of Netflix’s harrowing new limited series “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen,” insists that is not the case.

“I’m afraid of everything,” Boston, 31, said during a recent Zoom conversation. “I’m afraid of horror movies, but that’s why I love them so much, because they scare me. A lot of horror people are desensitized and looking for something to shake them. I am the opposite. I am easily afraid.”

The easily frightened — and the recently engaged — might be advised to approach Boston’s new series, which premiered Thursday, with caution. A haunting fusion of David Lynch surrealism and “Rosemary’s Baby” paranoia, “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” traces the peculiar and ominous events that unfold in the week leading up to the nuptials between wary Rachel (Camila Morrone) and trusting fiancé Nicky (Adam DiMarco), as overseen by Nicky’s mother Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Faced with inexplicable truths about Nicky’s family and her own past, Rachel becomes convinced that saying “I do” has the potential to prove deadly, and she comes to fear what might take place when she walks down the aisle.

Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin in Netflix’s “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.”

(Netflix)

“I’d seen people in their wedding, in their vows, say, ‘I never once had a doubt,’” Boston said. “I’m like, ‘How could you not constantly question everything?’ It felt very natural to me to explore that idea in a horror show where the doubt is the horror.”

Horror has long been a preoccupation for Boston. The Oregon native has a tattoo of the phrase “Carrie White burns in hell” to commemorate her favorite film, Brian DePalma’s landmark Stephen King adaptation, “Carrie.” She distinguished herself writing episodes of weird, atmospheric series including Netflix’s “Brand New Cherry Flavor,” a nightmarish exploration of witchcraft and filmmaking in 1990s L.A., and “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities,” also for Netflix.

Her installment in the Oscar-winning director’s anthology series, “The Outside,” was inspired by a comic titled “Some Other Animal’s Meat” and followed the unnerving transformation one woman undergoes after purchasing a beauty cream advertised on a late-night infomercial. “It’s all about being an outsider and feeling different, and I related to that,” Boston said.

Boston began writing at the age of 11, and after seeing Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” in her early teens, she became interested in filmmaking. “I was so taken by the way that the story is told, and I love a revenge story,” she said. “That’s when I started to think, ‘Is this something? Who wrote that? How does any of this work?’”

She had considered following her parents’ path and choosing a career in medicine, but during her first formal writing class at Northwestern University, she felt that she’d found her calling. “I was like, ‘No, this is it. This is what I want to do,’” Boston said.

“I’m like, ‘How could you not constantly question everything?’” Haley Z. Boston says about marriage. “It felt very natural to me to explore that idea in a horror show where the doubt is the horror.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

After graduation, she moved to L.A., taking a job in the William Morris Endeavor mailroom and writing scripts on her own time. A high school slasher movie she’d penned in college landed her an agent. Soon after, her pilot for a “sapphic murder story” inspired by “Killing Eve” netted her 22 pitch meetings — the first was with director Sam Raimi, whose early-career “Evil Dead” movies are beloved cult classics. “I was 24, and I did the scariest thing at the time possible,” Boston said. “Sometimes I think if you don’t think too much about how terrifying it is, and you’re just thrown into it, that’s better.”

With “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen,” Boston found herself thrown into the position of showrunner without ever having spent any real time on a set. Yet Morrone says Boston was the picture of confident professionalism throughout the shoot. “There’s just a grace to her,” Morrone said. “Even if she was overwhelmed, you would just never see it. These are her words and her world, and she inherently knows the character and the story so well that she could really navigate any questions thrown at her because it lives in her.”

The series is something profoundly personal for Boston. Growing up with parents whose marriage seemed idyllic had left her struggling once she began dating, and she channeled many of her own anxieties into the show. “They’ve been together for 37 years or something,” Boston said of her parents. “I felt all this pressure knowing that that exists. It always felt like a curse. You have this great example of what a marriage is, and I always found myself weighing every little romantic tryst against this 30-year marriage — which was unhelpful.”

She hit upon the premise for the series right around her 27th birthday, a time when more and more of her friends began to get married, and developed the idea while working on other projects. By the time Boston sat down to write the pilot episode, she knew the narrative and the characters so well that it took her just two weeks to finish.

Pitching the series, she met with “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer, who were so impressed by her vision that they signed on to executive produce “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” through their Upside Down Pictures banner.

“From reading one page of her script, it became very clear that this is someone who has a very unique voice,” Ross said. “It was unlike anything we’d ever read before. Immediately, we were like, ‘We have to be involved with this. We have to help bring her vision to life.’”

Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco) experience peculiar and ominous events leading up to their wedding.

(Netflix)

Matt added, “Haley has such a specific sense of humor. It’s very dark, very dry, but it also feels incredibly real. Her characters talk very much in the same way that real people talk. I find that sadly rare in the scripts that you read.”

The series was filmed in Toronto in January 2025 with directors Weronika Tofilska (“Baby Reindeer”), Lisa Brühlmann (“Killing Eve”) and Axelle Carolyn (“American Horror Story”) behind the camera. Boston said she and her collaborators would often reference specific films — everything from “The Celebration” to “Uncut Gems” — as a shorthand for the tone they were hoping to strike in a given episode. “I really love a story that takes something normal and grounded and gives one twist on it that throws you into a different world and makes you see things in a different way,” Boston said.

With “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” poised to elevate Boston’s Hollywood profile, establishing her as one of the most exciting voices in horror, she’s already planning for her future, writing a film that she intends to direct. “I love the horror community, but it is still such a boy’s club, and I really want to infiltrate it,” Boston said.

“The genre has been so much about women, and in studying feminist theory in horror, especially back in the ’70s, the genre forced men to relate to women — you’re watching a woman survive, which is ultimately very powerful,” she added. “I find it interesting how many men are making horror movies about women. I talked about ‘Carrie.’ I love that movie, but it’s missing something. Same with ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’

“This show is such a great opportunity to begin my career in this genre — now, I want to continue my reign of terror.”

The Connecticut Sun have reached an agreement to sell the team to Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta for $300 million and will move to Houston in 2027, according to a person familiar with the deal.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press on Friday because the deal hasn’t been announced publicly.

The WNBA Board of Governors still needs to approve the sale and the move. The team will play in Connecticut for the upcoming season before moving to Houston and becoming the Comets again.

This will end a 23-year run by the team in New England after the team moved to Connecticut from Orlando in 2003.

Houston was one of the groups that expressed interest in buying the team last year, eventually raising its bid to $250 million — the amount that Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia paid for expansion fees. Now with the $300 million sale price that’s the highest a team has been sold for in WNBA history.

The Sun had an offer for $325 million from a group led by Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca that would have moved the franchise to Boston. The WNBA basically blocked that deal from happening by saying that “relocation decisions are made by the WNBA Board of Governors and not by individual teams.”

The league also went on to say that other teams had gone through the expansion process and had priority over Boston.

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said during a news conference to announce the three new expansion teams that Houston was up next.

Ever since Mark Davis bought the Las Vegas Aces in 2021, the league has added new owners that have some sort of NBA tie. Golden State, which came into the league last season, is owned by the Warriors. Portland and Toronto are coming into the WNBA this season and the ownership groups are connected to NBA teams.

The next three expansion teams — Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia — are all owned by NBA groups in those cities.

The WNBA just agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement last week where teams need to have top notch facilities similar to those of NBA franchises.

With the news of the deal on Friday, it allows the franchise to have clarity for potential free agents who could sign with the Sun next month.

The Houston Comets were one of the original franchises in the league that won the first four WNBA championships from 1997-2000. The franchise disbanded after the 2008 season.

The last WNBA team to move cities was the Las Vegas Aces, who relocated from San Antonio in 2017.

Feinberg writes for the Associated Press.

March 17 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1762, New York City staged its first parade honoring the Roman Catholic feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. It was led by Irish soldiers serving in the British army. In 2002, President George W. Bush became the first sitting U.S. president to take part in the event, more than six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the city.

In 1776, the Continental Army under Gen. George Washington forced British troops to evacuate Boston. The Boston area marks Evacuation Day along with its St. Patrick’s Day parade each year.

In 1901, 71 paintings by the late Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh were shown at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris and caused a sensation across the art world.

File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI

In 1917, Russia appeared headed toward a republic following the end of the 300-year-old rule of the Romanoff family.

In 1958, the U.S. Navy launched the satellite Vanguard 1 into orbit around Earth.

In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India.

File Photo by John Eggitt/UPI

In 1969, Golda Meir, a 70-year-old former Milwaukee schoolteacher, was elected first female prime minister of Israel.

In 1974, the oil-producing Arab countries agreed to lift a five-month embargo on petroleum sales to the United States. The embargo, during which gasoline prices soared 300%, was in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel during the October 1973 Middle East War.

In 1990, Lithuania rejected the Soviet Union’s ultimatum to renounce its declaration of independence a week prior. The Soviets implemented sanctions against Lithuania and conducted a military operation in 1991 before other Soviet republics eventually declared their independence.

In 1992, South African Whites, by a margin of 68.7% to 31.2%, voted to end minority rule. Nelson Mandela was elected two years later as the first president in a fully representative democratic election.

In 2003, as war with Iraq seemed a certainty, U.S. President George W. Bush gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave the country. The ultimatum was rejected.

In 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin won a fifth term in office, making him the longest-serving leader of the country in about two centuries. A Russian election watchdog called the election unconstitutional.

File Photo by Maxim Shipenkov/EPA-EFE

BOSTON — Charlie McAvoy scored 39 seconds into overtime and Jeremy Swayman stopped 14 shots on Tuesday night to earn the Boston Bruins their 13th straight victory at home, 2-1 over the Kings.

Mason Lohrei scored midway through the third period to break a scoreless tie. But the Kings tied it five minutes later when Drew Doughty’s shot from the blue line deflected off the heel of Bruins forward Elias Lindholm and into the net.

It was the seventh straight time the teams had gone to overtime in Boston.

In the overtime, Mark Kastelic blocked a shot in the defensive zone and made a long pass to David Pastrnak, who waited for McAvoy to come into the zone. The Bruins’ defenseman and U.S. Olympian, who went to the locker room at the end of the second period after taking a puck off his mouth, skated in on Darcy Kuemper and went to his backhand for the winner.

Kuemper stopped 21 shots for the Kings, who entered the night one point out of the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference. The victory kept Boston in possession of the East’s second wild-card spot.

Swayman tied his career high with his 25th win of the season. The Bruins haven’t lost at the TD Garden since before Christmas.

After the game, Kings forward and future Hall of Famer Anze Kopitar stayed on the ice to shake hands with the Bruins after what is expected to be his last game in Boston.

Tommy DeCarlo, a longtime fan of Boston who became the classic rock band’s lead singer in the late 2000s, has died. He was 60.

DeCarlo died Monday following a battle with brain cancer, his family announced on Facebook.

“[H]e fought with incredible strength and courage right up until the very end,” the family’s statement said. “During this difficult time, we kindly ask that friends and fans respect our family’s privacy as we grieve and support one another.”

Born April 23, 1965, in Utica, N.Y., DeCarlo said he first started listening to Boston — the 1970s rock band known for its instrumental overtures and hits including “More Than a Feeling,” “Don’t Look Back” and “Peace of Mind” — as a young teenager, according to the group’s website. The vocalist credited his love for Boston’s original frontman Brad Delp and his desire to sing along with him on the radio for helping to develop his own singing voice.

After Delp’s death in 2007, DeCarlo, then a manager at a Home Depot, sent a link to his MySpace page filled with Boston covers as well as an original song in tribute to Delp to the Boston camp, hoping for a chance to participate in a tribute show for the singer. They kindly turned down his offer.

But eventually, Boston founder and lead songwriter Tom Scholz heard DeCarlo’s cover of “Don’t Look Back” and invited the singer to perform a few songs with the band at the tribute. That tribute show would be DeCarlo’s first time ever performing with any band in front of a crowd, but it wouldn’t be his last. He continued to perform with the band at live shows for years, and even joined them on some tracks for their 2013 album, “Life, Love & Hope.”

DeCarlo also formed the band Decarlo with his son, guitarist Tommy DeCarlo Jr. In October, the singer announced he was stepping away from performing due to “unexpected health issues.”

“[P]erforming and sharing music with all of you around the world has been one of the greatest joys of my life,” DeCarlo wrote in his Facebook post. “I can’t thank you all enough for the incredible love, support, and understanding you’ve shown me and my family during this time. It truly means the world to us.”

BOSTON — Eight-year-old Martin Richard was a bright, sunny boy who loved to ride his bike and went “wild” when he played offense on his soccer team, scoring the winning goal in a championship game last year.

Krystle Campbell was the vivacious assistant manager of local steakhouse, the first to backstop fellow workers by running plates from the kitchen. She could instantly smooth over diners’ complaints with her smile.

They were both cheering on the sidelines of the Boston Marathon on Monday when two bombs went off with a thunderous boom and cloud of white smoke, claiming them as the first victims of the blast. Boston University officials confirmed the death of a third person Tuesday: a graduate student who has not been identified.

Friends and family members of the victims were still in shock after Monday’s chaos. Martin’s father, Bill Richard, who was tending to his wife and 6-year-old daughter, who were injured in the blast, released a statement thanking strangers for their prayers.

“We also ask for your patience and for privacy as we work to simultaneously grieve and recover,” he said.

Campbell’s mother, Patty, emerged briefly on the front steps of her family’s modest two-story home in Medford.

“We are heartbroken at the death of our daughter,” Campbell told reporters, her voice shaking between sobs. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

As federal investigators chased leads in the effort to find the perpetrators, doctors at Boston’s trauma centers tended to the more than 170 people wounded in the explosions, many of whom have been released. Dr. George Velmahos, the leader of the trauma team at Massachusetts General Hospital, said that although many of its surgeons trained on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, they were confounded by the severity of the injuries they confronted as waves of patients arrived at the emergency rooms Monday.

Some of the patients were in surgery for hours as doctors tried to remove metal fragments, spiky metal pieces that looked like nails without heads, and pellets that had shredded their limbs. But the positive outlook of many of them left Velmahos “moved and really amazed.”

“Some of them woke up today with no legs and told me they were just happy to be alive,” Velmahos said. “Some of them said they thought they were lucky.”

Among the relatives and friends who kept watch at Mass General was 39-year-old Corey Comeau, who was visiting his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend Tuesday afternoon.
Comeau, a chef at Stephanie’s restaurant on Newbury Street, near what is now a crime scene, said his cousin was “still a little shellshocked” but that his cousin’s 24-year-old girlfriend suffered worse injuries.

“They say they can save her leg,” Comeau said as he stood outside the hospital after visiting.

“I can’t believe I’m even saying that. It’s not normal conversation.” Still, he said, the mood inside the hospital was “much calmer today than last night” with doctors going from patient to patient and conferring with families.

“These are some of the best hospitals in the world. The staff has been unbelievable,” he said.

At the same time, Monday’s chaos bred confusion, as in the case of Krystle Campbell.

Campbell had been watching the marathon alongside her friend Karen, her grandmother Lillian Campbell said, and the family at first believed that she had survived with serious injuries to her legs. But the family learned Tuesday morning that it was Karen who lived.

Lillian Campbell said her granddaughter stopped by her house for the last time last Thursday afternoon, when they drank tea and talked for several hours about work, friends and life.

“She loved being around people. She loved doing things for people,” said Lillian Campbell, 79, who noted that her granddaughter moved in to take care of her after she underwent surgery a few years ago. “She was hard worker. She was bubbly all the time.”

Nick Miminos, who had recently hired Campbell as an assistant manager at Jimmy’s Steer House in Arlington, Mass., said the 29-year-old “had one of those personalities that belongs in hospitality.”

“The wait staff loved working with her,” Miminos said. “She would run food for them, clear the tables for them. She wasn’t just a figurehead. She enjoyed getting her hands dirty.”

Not far away in the Ashmont section of Dorchester, neighbors and friends of the Richard family grieved at a candlelight vigil for young Martin. Bill Richard had been a force in restoring the historic neighborhood. His wife, Denise, who suffered critical injuries Monday, was a librarian at the Neighborhood House Charter School, where Martin and his 6-year-old sister, Jane, were enrolled.

Twins Andreas and Alejandro Calderon, 10, came by the Richard house to place a soccer ball, signed with their names, on the family’s porch. The boys recalled Martin hopping around the playground at recess and unleashing his energy on the soccer field.

“When we put him on defense and goalie he would do good, but he would save his energy so when we put him on offense he would go wild,” said Andreas, whose father coached the team.

Other friends posted their memories of Martin on Facebook and Twitter. Among the more searing images was a picture of Martin, with his gap-toothed smile, holding a blue sign he had made with magic markers.

“No more hurting people,” his sign said. “Peace.”

ALSO:

Boston Marathon bombs: Crude, unsophisticated but still deadly

Dad of 8-year-old Boston bombing victim: ‘Please pray for my family’

After Boston twin bombings, a nation offers its support and solidarity

alana.semuels@latimes.com

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

andrew.tangel@latimes.com

Also contributing were Times staff writers Maeve Reston and Alan Zarembo in Los Angeles.