Every Story Of Creepshow Season One Ranked

In Autumn 2019, the much-anticipated revival of Romero and King’s 1982 Halloween staple, Creepshow, debuted on Shudder. Kicking off with twelve short vignettes across six episodes, its first season proved a mixed bag. At its peak, its quirky premises and smart writing are a pleasure. Although not quite reaching the brilliance of the original anthology (perhaps with one or two exceptions), never does the series feel disrespectful to its source. Even the less engrossing of its segments are masterpieces compared to 2006’s dreadful Creepshow 3, mind you – so fear not.

The series does have its glaring weaknesses: a few of its tales are more generic and unimaginative than we should rightly expect from the Creepshow title, and the comic book aesthetic isn’t quite utilised to its full potential (sometimes, hardly at all). Who on Earth thought that the murky, dull colour scheme of a lot of these stories was a good idea? And could they not have gotten the rights to that iconic theme from the movie?

Many of us were lured in with the teased promise of genre favourites, namely Jeffrey Combs, Tobin Bell, David Arquette and Adrienne ‘Call Me Billy’ Barbeau. And as you would expect from a series helmed by Greg Nicotero, with contribution from Tom Savini, the practical effects work is a delight. The Creeper himself - sometimes animated, sometimes practical - is on top form.

Although Creepshow’s second season has been delayed due to a certain viral pandemic, it certainly has horror fans eagerly anticipating its return.

In this unimaginative Loch Ness Monster-style story, the daughter of a supposedly insane man who spent his life raving of a monster sighting happens upon the same creature herself, lying by the side of a lake. She sees this as an opportunity to validate her father’s sanity and silence the community that ridiculed him, though her mother and abusive stepfather don’t believe her.

The final vignette of the season was met with a unanimous shrug of disappointment, it seems. Creepshow is a name that horror fans associate with larger-than-life premises, performances and visuals; ought the series have ended with a bang? This story is easily the blandest of the bunch. It’s based on a story by Joe Hill (novelist and son of Stephen King, who played the horror-obsessed boy in the original’s wraparound story) and directed by none other than Tom Savini – this should’ve been epic! The story is unimaginative, overly sentimental (it doesn’t even get that right) and is entirely devoid of fun. Surely that’s the one prerequisite of a Creepshow story: make it fun. Simple. Honestly, of the twelve, this is the only real dud.