{"id":892046,"date":"2026-10-23T16:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T16:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/892046\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T16:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T16:14:11","slug":"yaga-review-hudson-williams-witch-mystery-is-no-heated-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/892046\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Yaga’ Review: Hudson Williams Witch Mystery Is No ‘Heated Rivalry’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe witchy thriller \u201cYaga<\/a>\u201d is a Canadian production that co-stars Hudson Williams, now hot enough off of \u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d to earn a \u201cwith\u201d before his name in the credits. That\u2019s about where the similarities with the hockey-themed megahit end, though not for lack of trying: \u201cYaga\u201d \u2014\u00a0which airs on streaming service AMC+ in the States \u2014 painfully strains for the eroticism and insight into sexuality that came so easily to \u201cHeated Rivalry,\u201d resulting in an eight-episode season that\u2019s often cringe without ascending into camp. But other blunders are all \u201cYaga\u201d\u2019s own. Choppy pacing, poor casting and facile feminism all combine to make \u201cYaga\u201d a misfire, one viewers in search of seasonal scares should overlook in favor of alternatives.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdapted by creator Kat Sandler from her play of the same name, \u201cYaga\u201d introduces itself as a missing persons mystery centered on Williams\u2019 Henry Park, a billionaire heir whose concerned parents send family fixer Rapp (Noah Reid) to track down somewhere in rural British Columbia. But the story\u2019s real interest is right there in the title: Sandler wants to rework the Baba Yaga myth of cannibal witches in chicken-legged huts for the modern day. (\u201cYaga\u201d foreshadows this project with Slavic covers of various pop standards, a legitimately fun detail.) Unfortunately, the show can\u2019t muster a take more interesting than platitudes like \u201ca witch is just someone society has decided they\u2019re afraid of,\u201d coming more than a decade after touchstones like \u201cThe Witch\u201d and \u201cAmerican Horror Story: Coven\u201d advanced similar ideas in a more artful way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYaga\u201d could deliver excitement in other areas, and tries to. Rapp quickly discovers Henry and his lookalike roommate Logan (also Williams, minus colored contacts and plus a prosthetic nose), both college students, had an uncommonly close relationship with their professor Katherine (Carrie-Ann Moss), an anthropologist known as the \u201cbone lady\u201d for her academic interest in ossified remains. When he meets Katherine in a hotel bar, not realizing she\u2019s about to be a person of interest, Rapp\u2019s idea of a come-on is asking for sexy facts about bones.<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch clumsy and futile attempts at chemistry are not the fault of Moss, who\u2019s pretty much the only person in the ensemble to project the earthy, seductive vibe \u201cYaga\u201d is clearly going for. Rapp himself is part of the problem: Reid\u2019s performance renders him a loudmouth bro whose effect on the town\u2019s women, including but by no means limited to Katherine, utterly baffling. (At times, the question of Rapp\u2019s inexplicable attractiveness is more pressing than that of Henry\u2019s whereabouts.) There\u2019s also a clash between the gorgeous, haunting atmosphere implied by the scenery, all fog-bound waters and shady forests, and the buddy-cop banter between Rapp and his quasi-partner Carson (Clark Backo), a local police officer he mocks for being mannish \u2014 or even, gasp, gay! \u201cYaga\u201d can\u2019t manage the ramp-up from such crass comments to the eerie and metaphysical, with the elements forming a discordant clash rather than a smooth blend.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf there\u2019s an archetype more overdone than the witch who\u2019s actually a misunderstood outcast, it\u2019s the rich guy who\u2019s secretly into sinister sex stuff. Sure enough, the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein begins to haunt \u201cYaga\u201d as Rapp and Carson start to uncover what Henry and Logan have been up to \u2014 namely, house parties suffused with bisexual lighting and the occasional chicken sacrifice. Rather than alluring or even disgusting, the details of Henry and Logan\u2019s trysts are almost juvenile in their attempts to provoke; the particulars of who\u2019s sleeping with who, and under what circumstances, are filled with over-the-top and unconvincing details, jumping the shark from the salacious to the outright criminal in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time \u201cYaga\u201d arrives at its inevitable reversals of perpetrator and victim, whatever spell (get it?) the show\u2019s cast on the audience has long since been broken. Already offputting, Reid\u2019s performance of Rapp\u2019s dawning realizations \u2014 flipping from dismissive skepticism to feverish belief with little in between \u2014 grows less grounded by the minute. To be fair, the fault here lies equally with the scripts, which dump information without first creating suspense. Perhaps there\u2019s a reason most horror dramas don\u2019t have quick, 30-minute episodes, though the prospect of an even longer \u201cYaga\u201d is not an enticing one.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first two episodes of \u201cYaga\u201d are now streaming on AMC+, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Fridays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The witchy thriller \u201cYaga\u201d is a Canadian production that co-stars Hudson Williams, now hot enough off of \u201cHeated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,373941,92,220541],"class_list":["post-892046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-hudson-wiliams","tag-tv","tag-yaga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}