Main cast: Connor Christie (Pete), Madison Thompson (Jill),  Jasun Jabbar Wardlaw Jr (Binky Bradwell), Andrew Eakle (Bobby Reevestein), Aodhan Lane (Skeeter), Michael May (Eddie Hathaway), Will Kindrachuk (Justin), Madison Bailey (Carla), Ian Gregg (Alex), and Ravi Naidu (The Man in the Suitcase)
Directors: John Harrison and David Bruckner

Well, well, looks like the third episode of Creepshow finally makes some inroads into my heart. Well, sort of. The first segment, All Hollows Eve, is easily the best one I’ve seen in this show to date, although that isn’t saying much, I know, considering the show has been so far.

In the first segment, meet the Golden Dragons, a group of nerds comprising Pete, his brother Skeeter, token girl Jill, and their friends Binky and Bobby. They get together for trick-or-treating for Halloween, but they don’t seem into it. In fact, they express how they are tired of this ritual, with Jill saying with a hint of melancholy that this is the last time they will be doing this, and hence, it will also be the last time she’d see Pete, whom she is infatuated with. It gets more puzzling: the locals that see them flee the other direction, while adults treat them with loathing and fear. What is going on here?

Now, this story isn’t anything new, but what really works for me is the emotional undercurrents especially among Pete, Jill, and Skeeter. Maybe I’m just a sucker for emotional drama involving kids, but this one has me feeling all choked up a bit, especially in the final scene. It helps that the adults pretending to be kids for the most part play their roles very well (Andrew Eakle, especially, looks like he hasn’t been a teenager for at least ten years), and the sole child actor of the lot is silent throughout.

This segment is absolutely solid and it gets a lot of love from me for getting under my skin. The atmosphere, the pacing, the emotions are all well done, making this segment easily one of the best ones in the whole show.

Next is a far inferior The Man in the Suitcase. Basically, Justin finds a mysterious being all folded up in suitcase, and learns that causing that being to feel pain will cause him to spit out gold coins. He is convinced by his ex Carla and Carla’s friend Alex to hold the being captive and torture him so that they can get plenty of easy money. As you can imagine, this doesn’t end well.

This segment is silly, and it only makes me realize one thing that is present in the original Creepshow movies but sorely lacking here: camp. Sure, this segment—and this show—has moments of humor, but not to the extent that it revels in the absurdity of its premise. Unfortunately, this segment has an absurd premise that needs a high level of camp to pull off, but it treats the whole thing like a more “realistic”, so to speak, horror premise. Because of this, the segment comes off as dumb. Shame, really, because if the people behind this segment had openly displayed that they know how silly the premise is and ramp up the absurdity to comical levels, it will be so much easier to go with the flow and enjoy this segment.

The first segment saves this episode and carries it to the finish line, and it is the main reason this episode gets three oogies. Yes, the second segment is a disappointment, but the first segment makes me sit straight and think that, who knows, maybe I will really have fun with this show after all.