Creepshow: Solid Sequel or Creepshow 3 repeat

Creepshow, unlike in the movies, varies in quality and formatting from story to story. That being said, all vignettes have an element of the movie’s signature George Romero campiness, just in different ways. This is partially due to the fact that the directors and writers for each show are different, yet a lot of them worked on the original film. They all feel like they were made with fifteen dollars and an iphone camera, just like the original movie, and that works to the series’ benefit. If you’re a fan of campy horror, this will be enjoyable to you. If you’re not, then you’re probably not going to enjoy it.

Because each vignette ranges in quality, there are some episodes in the series that are worth watching more than others. I’ve already covered the first episode in my review of it, and after watching the entire season I’ve come to the conclusion that the second half of the episode isn’t. Part of the problem is that it presents a very safe and comforting environment at first. This is oftentimes used in horror like in Stanley Kubrik’s The Shining with the hotel. While on it’s own a hotel isn’t scary, the environment is manipulated in a way that feels off enough to become scary. This vignette doesn’t manipulate the environment enough to where I can feel genuinely scared.

The next episode contains “Bad Wolf Down” and “The Finger”. Neither of these are particularly good or particularly terrible; they’re just okay. I wouldn’t say they’re the worst of the season, but they’re not all that great. “Bad Wolf Down” follows a group of soldiers during World War 2 that get trapped in an abandoned building and have to resort to extraneous measures to escape a group of Nazis. The best part about this particular vignette was the novelty of having a horror story set in World War 2, which doesn’t often happen. Other then that, the episode wasn’t particularly frightening or particularly eventful. It felt very formulaic, going through all the steps it needed to take to make a Creepshow-esque vignette, but not doing anything further. “The Finger”, telling the story of a reclusive man who finds a strange, detached finger that begins to grow, is the same. The main difference between the two is that they’re formatted differently. “The Finger” presents a narrative formatting where the main character speaks directly to the camera. Also, there are a lot of quick cuts,which seems more in place for a comedy or a vlog, but instead it’s used for horror. While there are some funny moments in this section, it’s overwhelmingly not.

Episode 3 contains “All Hallow’s Eve” and “The Man in the Suitcase”. This I would consider to be one of the best episodes of the entire season. If you don’t have the energy to sit through every single episode and just want to watch one, this is your episode. Starting off, “All Hallow’s Eve” is a lot of fun. It’s about a group of kids that go Trick or Treating, where there are consequences if it’s not given to them what they want. The scenes here that are supposed to be terrifying are pretty terrifying, and there’s a genuine chemistry between the children that make it pretty enjoyable. The setting of Halloween also works well for a campy horror series for obvious reasons. Furthermore, “The Man in the Suitcase” works particularly well because of it’s creativity. That story’s about a teenager who accidentally grabs a suitcase that contains a living, disfigured man that bleeds gold coins. What I liked about this vignette specifically was where they went with it from there, which felt very smart and very human, while still maintaining the show’s signature campiness.

Episode four was primarily worth watching for the second half, though the first half wasn’t terrible. “The Companion”, the first vignette, was about a young boy who runs away from his brother, who has a habit of beating him, and ends up accidentally summoning a terrifying sentient scarecrow. This vignette was very similar in quality to “Bad Wolf Down”. It had its scares, it had it’s camp, but it didn’t offer much else other than that. I will applaud the use of a scarecrow as a fear-inducing creature. Living scarecrows have the same cultural dominance in the Horror industry as mummies do: little to none. The next vignette was a little more interesting in my opinion. To be completely fair, there were some problems with the series from a social justice standpoint; this vignette featured some of the only LGBT characters in the entire series, and they were villainized. But, looking past that, this vignette has the only scene in the entire series that genuinely freaked me out. Also, Tricia Helfer’s acting is superb in this episode, arguably the best acting in the entire show. The lighting was another positive factor, with the elevator scene standing out in particular as masterful.

Episode five started out fine with the first vignette but the second didn’t live up to the first’s quality. The first episode entails a murderer getting into a car crash on a dark and stormy and being saved by a strange mortician. While for the most part there’s nothing wrong with this episode, the ending felt strange to me. They did some very abstract things with the cinematography which left me feeling confused. There was a point in the episode where I wished I would have stopped instead of having to go through the very strange ending that was presented. Furthermore, the second vignette, “Times is Tough in Musky Holler”, is my least favorite of the series. It’s about members of a town that have imprisoned a group of people and end up dealing with them in strange and harsh ways. The first vignette took up a majority of the episode, and the second vignette just feels like something they threw in there to add more space. Most of the episode is incredibly confusing, which works well if at the end there’s a satisfying reveal. Here there is none. Not that there isn’t a reveal, but the reveal is underwhelming. It doesn’t help that half of the story is narration, which rarely works in modern television, unless some of the conventions aren’t followed. For example, in Arrested Development, narration goes against conventions and is used for comedic purposes. In “Times is Tough in Musky Holler”, all the conventions are followed. Episode six is another one of the best episodes in the series. This episode contains the vignettes “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” and “Skincrawlers”. “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” is a very cute episode. While it doesn’t do anything special regarding plot, the story is sweet and campy, and that’s all it needs to be.There’s something about the way they designed the mythical beast that benefits this episode; it’s both cartoony and scary at the same time. Furthermore, the set design for this episode is particularly intriguing, with its spooky, foggy undertones. “Skincrawlers” is just absolutely terrifying. It’s comparable to the last vignette in the original Creepshow. It gives the audience a fairly minimal, but not nonexistent, level of dread through the entire episode. Then, it climaxes at a moment of extreme, yet nonetheless satisfying, gore.