Coldies Frozen Custard: A Sinister Slice of Small Town Horror
Within the twisted tapestry of Netflix’s Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, few details unsettle viewers more than the now-infamous Coldies Frozen Custard shop. At first glance, Coldies appears to be just another small-town establishment with a dark backstory, but its role in the series proves far more intricate—and loaded with chilling narrative misdirection for those paying close attention.
A Killer’s Legacy: The Mythos of Coldies
The town’s infamous custard shop closed its doors following the shocking revelation: its owner, Larry Poole, was a serial killer responsible for three deaths. From the first episode, Coldies isn’t just local flavor—it becomes the backdrop to urban legend and horror podcast fodder. Rachel, one of the show’s central figures, is regaled with a disturbing account from a would-be Poole victim, replete with haunting detail (such as a Barbie shoe found in the backseat of her tormentor’s car), infusing the very walls of Coldies with a sense of supernatural dread.
Suspense by Red Herring: Coldies as Narrative Diversion
For a time, it feels as if Coldies and Larry Poole will be the anchors of the series’ terror. Clues mount: Rachel stumbles upon a lone Barbie shoe in a bathroom, and in flashbacks, we watch her parents make an uneasy stop at Coldies before Poole’s crimes were discovered. These moments are meticulously designed to lead viewers toward expecting that Coldies is not just a place but the place where horror lurks. Yet, in a masterful stroke of genre subversion, Larry Poole is ultimately a red herring. He is not the so-called ‘Sorry Man,’ nor is Coldies itself tied directly to the central curse that haunts Rachel and her lineage.
Inheritance of Instinct: The Psychological Chill of Coldies
The legacy of Coldies isn’t about bloodshed so much as about intuition—particularly, women’s intuition in the face of danger and disbelief. Rachel, depicted with crippling anxiety and superstition throughout the series, replicates her mother’s wariness decades later. When Rachel miraculously recreates the Coldies logo despite never having seen it, we witness the eerie hereditary line: both women possess an almost supernatural perception of danger, dismissed by those closest to them. As viewers, the knowledge that Ali, Rachel’s mother, was right to harbor suspicion about Poole lends serious weight to the show’s exploration of how women’s fears are too often minimized, sometimes with fatal consequences.
Layers of Symbolism: Foxes, Boxes, and Unanswered Questions
The symbolism doesn’t end at the custard shop. Foxes dart throughout the series, serving as visual metaphors for Rachel and Ali—one dead but nurturing, the other wounded but surviving. The infamous Barbie shoe and the peculiar requirement for Rachel to be enclosed in a box before intimacy with Nicky further muddy the waters between supernatural warning and mental health struggles. These narrative flourishes leave viewers on edge, questioning whether omens mean anything at all—or if certainty is an illusion when it comes to human relationships and trust.
Unpacking the Cultural Commentary
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen cleverly wields Coldies and similar details not just for scares, but to interrogate broader themes of trust, intuition, societal gender roles, and the psychological weight women bear in environments primed to invalidate their perception of threat. The story achieves this through a stylized genre-horror lens, aligning with current trends where storytelling moves beyond surface scares and into social commentary, much like what’s been seen in recent series such as The Haunting of Hill House and Yellowjackets.
Enveloped in small-town myth, psychological dread, and sharp social observation, Coldies is far more than a defunct custard shop with a chilling past—it’s a centerpiece for the show’s nuanced interrogation of fear, trauma, and who is truly believed when things start to go wrong.
