Creepshow, Shudder’s new anthology series, trods some well-trod ground in “The Companion,” the first short film of its fourth episode. Yet this adaptation of the great Joe Lansdale’s short story – with able help from his kids Kasey and Keith — finds something new to say about the evil scarecrow subgenre. In it, bullied Harold (Logan Allen), pursued across the backwoods by his monstrous brother, Billy (Voltaire Council), stumbles on the abandoned homestead of one Old Man Brenner (Afemo Omiliani). Seems the old guy, out of loneliness, has constructed a straw golem out of bits and pieces and brought it to unnatural life. Unfortunately, the scarecrow thing starts eating the locals, leading to Brenner doing the Dr. Frankenstein act of murder/suicide and to similar success, leaving a not-quite-exorcised thing behind, just waiting for some kid like Harold to stumble upon it. Director David Bruckner brings a real sense of place to the piece, making clever use of the show’s comic-panel format as a split-screen and casting it all in the sort of blue twilight where so many of Lansdale’s stories exist. 

As with his work onThe Ritual, Bruckner demonstrates a facility with the long setup and the slow reveal. A shot of the monster trying to get into the farmhouse is a lovely throwback to both the nightmarish images of eighties-era Jim Henson contraptions likeThe Dark Crystal andLabyrinth, and the stop-motion animations of Czech master Jan Svankmajer. The whole things plays a lot like a cross betweenThe Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill with its creeping crud, and Svankajer’sLittle Otik with its animate vegetation. The effects work, as they have the entire series, walking the perfect line just this side of camp. Harold’s confrontation with the beast has echoes to the earlier installment in the series called“The Finger,” in that it tells the story of a loner, used poorly by life, suddenly given an unholy avatar with which to exert power. It’s a cautionary tale, then, in the best EC Comics cumCreepshow tradition, where the meek inherit the earth but not by staying that way.

The second short is Roxanne Benjamin’s “Lydia Layne’s Better Half,” an intimate and rare exploration of corporate politics where the two combatants are both women. It opens with a tense meeting where boss Lydia (Trica Helfer) tells candidates for the next Chief Financial Officer of Lydia’s corporation will be unctuous white guy Tom (Michael Scialabba) rather than driven woman-of-color Celia (Danielle Lyn). Things get more complicated when it’s revealed that Lydia and Celia are lovers and Lydia may have been making the decision based more on a desire to keep Celia around rather than Celia’s ability to do the job. Celia is outraged, of course, and then terrible things happen resulting in the two of them being stuck in an elevator after an earthquake, waiting for the fire department to arrive.

An at-times fascinating two-hander that would have benefited with more dissection of corporate rather than interpersonal politics, I confess at feeling some trepidation at the sight of two successful businesswomen doing their best to destroy one another. It could work if it’s read as satire of a culture that is busy pitting women like this against one another when it’s not actively harassing and repressing them, but there’s just not enough substance there for that to be something more than an extra-textual read. The argument could be made, for instance, that Lydia has been forced to become more like a male executive in order to thrive in that environment, but I’m not sure that the short is making it. The tragedy of the piece is I suspect at some point along the line, the story involved a male boss inexcusably passing over a capable woman working for him – a cultural trope so familiar that it doesn’t need more flesh than this short provides. When the boss is a woman, and a lesbian at that, and when her underling is a minority, there are enough mines in the ground that it could only have benefitted from a more careful curation.

As it is, “Lydia Layne’s Better Half” provides a few good shock moments and a couple of gross-outs for which this series has already become known. It pulls no punches in regards to the violence, and violent implications, of Lydia and Celia’s actions. Director Benjamin makes good use of space and light as well, pulling the most out of a claustrophobic environment. I love a sequence where you see Celia slumping down behind a couch in the unfocused background as Lydia tries to get rid of a curious underling. If it never quite gets at the text bubbling there right underneath the surface (even the use of a “Lady of the Year” trophy as a weapon is loaded), it at least gets theCreepshow feeling right in a final shot that pays tribute to the film’s “Happy Father’s Day” segment. Four down, two more episodes to go.

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 Episode 4 ofCreepshow on Shudder