The ‘Creepshow’ Season Finale Caps Off A Triumphant First Season

As the first season wraps on what’s turned out to be a record-setting run for horror streaming platform Shudder, Creepshow presents a pair of horror shorts with sterling pedigrees. The first, a nasty little confection called “Skincrawlers,” is co-written by Batman: The Animated Series veteran Paul Dini and the last, based on a short story by Joe Hill, is directed by industry F/X legend Tom Savini. One’s fantastic, demonstrating all of the pulp hallmarks of its creator in fine form; the other decidedly less so, alas, amplifying its creator’s worst instincts.

Let’s start with the good. Sad, fat guy Henry (Dana Gould, sometime producer of The Simpsons and Parks and Recreation) checks out a revolutionary new weight loss cure at a clinic run by the very fit Dr. Sloan (Chad Michael Collins). Patients fork over the cash, check in, and less than a week later, emerge about a quarter of the men and women they used to be. Seems the good doctor, an explorer of the dark places of the world, has discovered ten slimy specimens of a magical little beast he keeps in an aquarium in his clinic’s lobby. I love the sign on the glass that assures the objects about to appear are closer than they appear right before a fun effects moment. Sure enough, on the day of a rare solar eclipse, beasties reveal exactly how close they’ve been all along. 

“Skincrawlers” nails the EC Comics formula of bad jokes and sick payoffs tied to human vanity and greed. It plays the notes and hears the music, too. Consider the sequence where a hospital robe-clad Henry, convinced finally to undergo the miracle procedure on live television, squares off after a series of unfortunate calamities, against the dog-thing from The Thing in a studio hallway next to a vending machine. Every performance is in on the joke. The unctuous TV hosts with their plastic grins, the other recipients of the procedure who can’t wait to brag about how much sex they’re getting, even Dr. Sloan who isn’t an evil scientist so much as a well-meaning fat guy trapped in the body of a millionaire fitness guru. When cosmic justice comes to visit at its explosive climax, the KNB Effects Group pulls out all the stops. In a season already full of superlative gore, “Skincrawlers” takes the record for gallons of grue. Still, for all its excess, it’s one tiny moment involving an eyeball that got me squirming. A fine effort from director Roxanne Benjamin that, despite a little clunkiness at its pivotal moment, showcases an emerging genre talent even as it anchors Creepshow with a bookend at least the equal of its fantastic Stephen King-infused opener “Grey Matter.”

A shame that the season had to end, though, with Tom Savini’s exhausted-feeling “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain.” Taking way too long in its set-up of a scenario not only familiar but, with this cast and this script, not believable, by the time it finally gets to the payoff its telegraphed from the first panel, it’s already lost whatever momentum its opening act provided for it. Tortured Rose (Sydney Wease) mourns for her missing dad as her mom Leigh (Gena Shaw) moves on with dangerous drifter Chet (James Devoti). Chet is an obvious avatar for Savini’s idea of masculinity: violent, given to long monologues about weapons, and in bad need of a shave. It does not track emotionally that anyone would take this relic seriously. The conflict in the first three-quarters of this slog has Rose insisting her real dad wasn’t crazy for chasing a lake monster, while would-be suitor Thomas (Connor Jones) gets bullied by psycho Chet. The plot point that drives its conclusion is a protracted sequence involving a not-startling discovery ending with a not-shocking death. With its last short, Creepshow has laid its first real egg.

What’s most disappointing about “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” is that the Hill story upon which it’s based succeeds in building a compelling family dynamic for which the monster is metaphor. What’s most surprising is that Savini, known for his practical effects work with George Romero (and the legendary shotgun effect in Maniac), chose this piece to highlight his suspect dramatic chops instead. After wading through what feels like hours of flat exposition and directionless performances, the payoff arrives with no tension, no irony, and, fatally, no catharsis. An anti-climax shared by Rose and Leigh, it seems, on the banks of that lake, staring blankly at how the universe has intervened in their sorrows. It’s like they know their story is a bust and, like us, are glad it’s over. If it ends in a whimper, at least it can be said that Creepshow‘s first season overall has been a triumph: part of a wave of great new genre anthologies. I can’t wait for Season 2.

Walter Chaw is the Senior Film Critic for filmfreakcentral.net. His book on the films of Walter Hill, with introduction by James Ellroy, is due in 2020. His monograph for the 1988 film MIRACLE MILE is available now.

Stream Creepshow on Shudder