For nearly as long as horror has existed on film, we’ve had George Romero movies to make it better. From inventing the concept of the modern zombie with Night of the Living Dead to his recently resurfaced gem The Amusement Park, Romero remains a pillar of the genre, a smart, bespectacled filmmaker whose work continues to influence others even after his death. My personal favorite, one in his vast catalogue of work, is 1982’s Creepshow, an anthology film featuring a host of scary stories, from jealous strangers to bizarre creatures hiding under stairwells.
Anthologies are, of course, perfect breeding grounds for sequels, and Shudder snapped up that opportunity in 2019, creating a series based on the Creepshow name, following the same format. Its fourth season continues the tradition, with every hour-long episode featuring two short segments, each with its own unique and terrifying stories to tell. The season features everything from the classic vampires and zombies to deadly video games and evil tooth fairies, a grab bag of gory goodies for anyone into horror — or looking to get into it.Anthology’s a great place to start if you haven’t quite got the stomach for something like Talk to Me or Evil Dead Rise, and Creepshow Season 4 is no exception. It’s got all the hallmarks of the film franchise from whence it came. There are, of course, references to Creepshow’s original creators, including a gag based on Steven King’s pen name, and a couple of segments set in Romero’s hometown of Pittsburgh. (The latter of which makes this Pittsburgh local want to throw out all of her old Polaroid cameras and comic books.) But it’s also easily digestible as a series, even if you haven’t seen the other three; throw on an episode at random and you’re bound for something interesting, at the very least. It knows its roots and celebrates them, with varying levels of success, depending on your personal brand of scares.
‘Creepshow’s Fourth Season Is Hit-or-Miss
The new season, featuring segments directed by PJ Pesce, executive producer Greg Nicotero, and more, is an even fifty-fifty split between well-crafted, effective ideas and those that could’ve used a bit more shaping, either on the acting or the writing front. Parodying Steven King’s success works far better than bringing Romero back to life through a comic book, but it’s a good effort, building on the success of three prior seasons as something perfect for throwing on in the background at this year’s Halloween party. It’s nice to see some familiar faces crop up, including Creepshow alum and fellow Pittsburgh local Tom Atkins, who appears as a jaded, dying father in the segment “Something Burrowed, Something Blue,” and there’s a nice variety to the kinds of stories being told, without the individual writers and directors feeling too beholden to Romero’s legacy.
The weakest of the lot is, surprisingly, the very first segment of the first episode, “Twenty Minutes With Cassandra,” featuring TikTok star and The Midnight Club alum Ruth Codd doing what can only be described as The Absolute Most in a story that would’ve benefited from a hell of a lot more subtlety. That’s a common complaint for me across a handful of the other stories, though it could be argued that they’re just playing to type, considering Creepshow and Romero’s B-movie origins. The roughly half-hour format plays perfectly for some of the concepts — including “The Hat” and “Doodles” — while some demand a bit more time to play, with stories that seem to wrap up far too fast or move too quickly with actors who struggle to keep up.
A mixed bag is inevitable with anthologies — even the original film has its duds — and while it’s not perfect, Season 4 comes damn close. At the very least, with two segments per episode, there’s never one that’s a complete dud; at least one half of the hour is worth watching, even if it means suffering through a more annoying version of The Frighteners or a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood that doesn’t quite land.
‘Creepshow’ Leans Too Much on Its Creatures
However, it seems like the season (and maybe the show in general) has an overreliance on creatures — nearly every segment featured a monster of some sort, all practical and each as gross as the last. While I adore a creature feature that uses practical effects to its advantage — something Romero was the king of — a number of them fail to land, either because they aren’t given enough screen time or because they’re used as a kind of spontaneous, unnecessary twist in a story that would’ve been far more interesting had they just focused on their human characters being twisted and evil. Add to that the fact that the original Creepshow films (and my favorite segments from those) used their creatures sparingly and for peak dramatic effect, the deus ex zombie gets a little old by the end of the season.
At its best — something you could say for horror as a genre — the season works when its concepts are simple, and the writers don’t make leaps and bounds to overcomplicate them. Sure, there are elements of other horror classics plastered all over this season (I can see From Beyond, Salem’s Lot, and 1985’s House just on the surface), but commit to the bit hard enough and anything will sell, particularly when it comes to scares. When Creepshow lets go of its obsession with practical effects and desire to make everything shocking enough to grant using their classic comic-book style shock graphics, it turns into the best kind of storytelling: the kind that lingers, a bad feeling on the back of your neck when you wake up in the middle of the night, even though you know nothing’s really there. Or is it?
Rating: B
