Creepshow 2019 Episode 1 (Patreon)

Creepshow 2019 isn’t really a reboot. It’s not a remake of the original movies nor is it full of the same calculated commercial value as the Marvel films. The original Creepshow movies, the original in 1982, the sequel in 1987 and the one everyone forgets from 2007, were anthology movies. Some loose elements form a frame narrative around our undead, EC Comics throwback host, The Creep, but each story stands on its own. Creepshow 2019 is another set of anthologized fiction. Not everything comports to the logic of Disney. Some things, like The Creep, just keep coming back.

Gray Matter

The new series starts off with a nod to the old with “Gray Matter”—what feels like the new show’s homage to the classic “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” based on the short story “Weeds” by Stephen King. The two are similar enough with a working class man being slowly transformed into a fungal monster. (A moss-like lump for Verrill and a fungal ooze-monster for “Gray Matter’s” Randy.) The similarities are really just at the surface level and the core of “Gray Matter” is allowed to ooze its way in a fresh direction.

We hear of Randy’s fate from his son, the wholesomely named Timmy. We learn that Randy took to the bottle as a way to cope with the loss of his wife and the precarious labor that is factory work. The booze, and here comes a metaphor, is literal poison and transforms Randy from a once loving father into something monstrous. 

They are both stories of horror mediated by relationships to money. Jordy Verrill finds a meteorite that he thinks will make him rich, Randy is caught in the wheels of a fading industrial America. While the two are similar, Gray Matter highlights a more systemic, less personal cause at the heart of the problem. Even the sheriff takes a moment to quip “Son of a bitch landlord” when inspecting Randy’s decaying home. It’s not greed and opportunism that end the world in “Gray Matter,” but a world that couldn’t support a man who needed help that ends itself. #Grim. 

The House of the Head

This short was absolutely brilliant. Go watch it.

“The House of the Head” is the story of Evie, a young girl who happens to love her dollhouse—only this dollhouse is haunted. 

What makes this short so great is its cinematography. The dollhouse is always looming large in the frame. We are treated to these clever wide angle shots where the dollhouse covers about a fourth of the frame and Evie is comparatively microscopic in the background. The dolls that live in the dollhouse are sort of alive. While we never actually see them move, the filmmakers make great use of Evie looking through different rooms to change the position of the dolls while we are looking elsewhere. 

“The House of the Head” is interested in all the little hauntings that mediate our everyday lives. Those little ghosts we desperately try to hide away while we struggle to convince the people around us that everything is fine, it’s under control, we’ve got this; no, that’s not a cursed dollhouse I’m dragging around. Why do you ask? 

Ultimately this spooky short had more heart than half of the major studio releases I’ve seen this year and might be in the running for my Best of 2019. 

And the award for best film goes to: A short about a haunted dollhouse.

-Ash