First Episode, First Impressions... 'Creepshow'

The first proper day of holiday was brilliant (although maybe a little too much walking for my slightly arthritic knee...) but it didn't leave me a lot of time for reading or in any state to read when we finally got home... That's ok, I knew there was a reaon why I bought loads of thin books and 'almost finished' books with me this time.

In the meantime though, what was a Graeme to do as far as blogging went? Well, it seemed like as good a time as any to dust off an old feature and see where it took me. Yep, it's a 'welcome back' for 'First Episode, First Impressions' which kind of came to an abrupt end when I realised that I hadn't watched anything that had me desperate to watch more. The feature got quietly shelved and it was back to watching 'Doctor Who' and so on. It's back now and I've actually found a series that I want to watch more of. 'Creepshow', you're up...

I never watched the original 'Creepshow' movies but saw enough on Youtube to know what they're all about; a series of short horror pieces framed by interludes with a scary puppet. I haven't watched the series on Shudder, until now, because, well... I didn't have Shudder but now that I do, there was no excuse to not check it out.

Well, I've just watched the first episode and if that first episode is anything to go by... There's no question of whether I'll be watching the rest of the series, it was brilliant.

Instead of a movie, what we have here are six episodes each containing two stories. First up were Stephen King's 'Grey Matter' and Josh Malerman's 'House of the Head'...

'Grey Matter' is a favourite Stephen King short story of mine (where we find out just what can happen if you drink a dodgy beer...) and I was keen to see how it worked on the small screen. As luck would have it, it worked very well. I knew how the story went so there was very little there to surprise me but enough small changes were made to cast things in an entirely new light by the end and that made the whole thing worthwhile. There were also a couple of neat little nods to other books by King that didn't intrude on the plot but were still cool to see. And it had Tobin Bell and Giancarlo Esposito in it (both doing an excellent job but I wouldn't have expected anything less to be honest). If that wasn't enough, 'Grey Matter' goes a couple of steps beyond the short story and gets properly icky and gross in a body horror (or should I say bodies...) way. It makes you jump and makes you go 'ewwww...' all at the same time. I couldn't ask for anything more, it was brilliant.

For this viewer then, 'Grey Matter' really set the bar for whatever came next. Luckily for me, next up was 'House of the Head' and I thought it was even better. Evie is given a doll's house to play with but the family living in it have an unwelcome guest who is out for blood. Can Evie rescue the family, or will she have to think about rescuing her own...?

For me, 'House of the Head' was a masterclass in drawing the tension out until breaking point and then hitting the viewer wth something awful. What made it all the more scary is that all of this is happening to a family of dolls and we're seeing it through the eyes of a young girl who has no idea of what is happening but, with all the bravery of a child who loves her toys, is fully prepared to set herself against whatever is killing off the dolls in her dolls house. Cailey Fleming literally carries the whole segment on her shoulders and is superb as this brave little girl who is trying to protect two families.

The ending might seem a little 'too easy' but it just made sense to me that this would be the best way to deal with it. And there was still time for a little jump scare at the end. Pretty much perfect.

So, I'll be making my way through the rest of the episodes over the next few days/couple of weeks depending on how my reading goes. The standard is pretty high already so I'm hoping for more of the same...