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Something Wicked This Way Comes follows Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, two thirteen-year-old best friends in Green Town, Illinois, whose world tilts when Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show rolls in the week before Halloween. The carnival's ringmaster, Mr. Dark, appears to fulfil the secret longings of everyone he meets — but each wish is a trap, and he feeds on the lives of those he ensnares. The real resistance comes from Will's father, Charles Halloway, whose love proves stronger than the lure of regained youth. Readers drawn here tend to prize atmosphere over shock and dread that is earned, not cheap.
About Something Wicked This Way Comes
Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1962 dark fantasy novel by Ray Bradbury, and the second book in his Green Town Trilogy. It is about two 13-year-old best friends, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, and their nightmarish experience with a traveling carnival that comes to their Midwestern home, Green Town, Illinois, on October 24. In dealing with the creepy figures of this carnival, the boys learn how to combat fear. The carnival's leader is the mysterious "Mr. Dark", who seemingly wields the power to grant the townspeople's secret desires. In reality, Dark is a malevolent being who, like the carnival, lives off the life force of those it enslaves. Mr. Dark's presence is countered by that of Will's father, Charles Halloway, the janitor of the town library, who harbors his own secret fear of growing older because he feels he is too old to be Will's father.
From the Wikipedia article Something_Wicked_This_Way_Comes_(novel), available under CC BY-SA.
Films like Something Wicked This Way Comes
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Something Wicked This Way Comes
A diabolical circus twists the wishes of a small American town, with two boys standing against Mr. Dark's corrupting power.
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It Comes
A mysterious being exceeds all imagination as unlikely allies — a journalist and an exorcist — unite to shield a family.
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It Comes at Night
An unnatural threat from outside fractures a fragile domestic order, letting dread seep in through the cracks of trust.
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Thomas and the Magic Railroad
A dwindling supply of magic gold dust threatens to sever the bridge between two worlds, putting everything at risk.
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Wicked Little Things
Children trapped underground decades ago are still alive — a dark secret buried beneath a quiet Pennsylvania town.
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How It Ends
A mysterious apocalyptic event dissolves all order, leaving one father racing through chaos toward the people he loves.
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American Gothic
A sinister sheriff in a deceptively quiet Southern town develops an unsettling interest in a young boy named Caleb.
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A lost alien assumes the form of a teenage boy, navigating an unfamiliar world with empathy and unlikely humour.
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October Road
A man returns to his hometown after a decade away, confronting the weight of old ties and the stories he left behind.
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Spooksville
A boy moves to a small town known as Spooksville, where strange things have always happened and keep on happening.
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An eccentric, foul-tempered bookshop owner finds that wilful antagonism and drunkenness make for unexpectedly rich company.
More books like Something Wicked This Way Comes
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From the Dust Returned
Another dark journey from Ray Bradbury — exhilarating, dangerous, and shot through with his signature dark imagination.
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Step by Wicked Step
Five children stranded on a stormy night uncover a tale of a wicked stepfather, then share their own difficult stories.
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Darkness Comes
A blizzard halts a city in its tracks — and the stillness it brings ushers in an evil that defies imagination.
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Switch on the Night
A lonely boy afraid of the dark discovers a new world through a girl named Dark — fear gently turned inside out.
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Gaslight Arcanum
A collection of uncanny stories threads mystery and the supernatural through familiar, gaslit corners of the world.
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Hereville
A girl must face her own double — a doppelganger set in motion by a troll and a witch — to reclaim her identity.
Frequently asked
What should I read after Something Wicked This Way Comes?
If you want more from the same author, From the Dust Returned shares Bradbury's lyrical, darkly fantastical voice. For a different take on small-town dread, Darkness Comes delivers a short, sharp dose of evil arriving with a blizzard.
What films are like Something Wicked This Way Comes?
The 1983 film adaptation Something Wicked This Way Comes is the most direct companion. For something tonally similar — sinister arrivals, small towns, dread pressing in from outside — Wicked Little Things and It Comes at Night are strong picks.
Why does Something Wicked This Way Comes resonate so deeply?
It captures the specific ache of boyhood — the pull toward forbidden experience, the fear of getting exactly what you wish for — and wraps it in prose Bradbury himself called dark poetry. The father-son relationship at its centre gives the horror genuine emotional weight.