Eight times before, I’ve reeled off a series of movie and TV moments referencing New Haven.
Here’s part nine, which, unlike the season’s favorite nine-part franchises—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Conjuring, even the campier A Nightmare on Elm Street—plays mostly for laughs.
Midnight Visitor (2025), S1E1: Wonderfully self-aware, effortlessly funny and occasionally actually creepy, this retro-style public-access exploration of the paranormal debuted last week on New Haven’s Citizens Television. “I’m positively chilled that you could join us this evening,” says the esteemed, silk-pajamaed host character, Dean Dream. “I’m joined tonight by my illustrious co-ghost, Dustin T. Dust… Say hello, Dustin.” The camera cuts to a seated skeleton, who says nothing, which I hope becomes a running gag. After priming the show’s first segment, the actor playing the host, Sev Phillips, morphs into paranormal consultant Kenneth Brenda, a winking Australian field investigator with exaggerated expressions and a shifting accent. Approaching a purported haunted locale along the Guilford-Madison border, he says, “I’m already feeling a bit of a ghostly chill. There’s a little bit of a pressure on my bladder. It’s making me a little bit uncomfortable. Now whether or not that’s a ghost or I have to urinate, that remains to be seen.” Episode 1 takes its opposing drives to document and parody equally seriously, and somehow, with little to no budget, nails both.
ReEntry (2025), 7:59, 23:47, 52:37: Opening with a woman, Elenore, losing her husband, Lucas, to a multiversal portal experiment, this locally shot film really finds its footing around the 25-minute mark, at New Haven’s own Lighthouse Point. Lucas has suddenly reappeared after a year presumed dead, and now he’s reminiscing about the day they got engaged. Only his memory doesn’t match Elenore’s, as a clever multi-memory flashback (23:47) illustrates, prompting her to realize that the man who walked back out of the experimental portal isn’t the man she married at all. The flashback shows the park’s beach, carousel and, of course, lighthouse, while other scenes feature Branford’s Trinity Episcopal Church (7:59) and, nearby, Ashley’s Ice Cream (52:37). The movie’s locally rooted director, Brendan Choisnet, told us scenes were also shot in Guilford and at the University of New Haven.
Reboot (2025), S1E1, 3:52: In-show actor Reed Sterling, star of a corny hit sitcom where his character was often the butt of the joke, left the vehicle of his success to pursue a serious career in film—which is right when he discovered Hollywood isn’t that serious. Footage of an audition many years later shows him still struggling to adapt to this reality, as he reads with a casting director for the part of a simplistically written character. “You know what?” Sterling interjects after exchanging a few lines. “Um, actually, I’m thinking I should infuse him with a layer of weariness and vulnerability.” “Maybe don’t think,” the casting director replies. “Well— not— not exactly what they taught us at the Yale School of Drama,” a flustered Sterling stammers out, earning a quick singsong “thank you” he correctly interprets as “goodbye.”
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017), S1E7, 37:12: It’s 1958, and starting-out standup comic Miriam Maisel is visiting the home of Sophie Lennon, interviewing for a chance to perform with the then-rare female comedy star. To Maisel’s surprise, Lennon is nothing like her warm if boorish working-class stage persona—and also not quite the feminist Maisel had assumed her to be. “My goodness. You’re so pretty. Why comedy? Can’t you sing?” Lennon asks. “No,” Maisel replies, not expecting that from a fellow comedienne. “The comedy thing—I, I just kind of fell into it.” “Mm, me too,” Lennon says. “I went to Yale Drama School… I wanted to be the next Laurette Taylor. Then I graduated, and I starved. So I started doing this character, Sophie from Queens. And look what it paid for. Dawes?” The butler behind her answers, “Yes, madam,” to which Lennon responds—to Maisel, not Dawes—“Isn’t that marvelous?”
Secret Societies: In the Shadows (2022), S1E3: Aside from clocking all the aerial shots of downtown New Haven, the most fun you can have watching this heavily editorialized ‘docuseries’ episode about Yale’s Skull & Bones society is scrutinizing the frequent b-roll ‘reenactments’: hooded robed figures lurking in a witchy (and oddly foggy) Gothic lair; those same figures repeatedly carrying and emerging from ritualistic coffins; and, in one quick montage, shirtless mud wrestling, lantern-lit grave-robbing and a fresh-faced intitiate kissing a skull. Whether or not any of this resembles the organization’s actual activities, it’s hard to take Skull and Bones seriously after watching it—which, as the show itself supposes, may be exactly what the truly secretive society wants.
Written by Dan Mims. Image features a still from Episode 1 of Midnight Visitor.
