Main cast: Justin Long (Simon Sherman) and D’Arcy Carden (Renee Sherman)
Director: Greg Nicotero

This is it! The last episode of the second season of Creepshow, and I am sure they have something really spectacular… oh wait.

Simon Sherman, a brilliant inventor, has invented this virtual reality machine called the Immersopod, which allows its user to “enter” any movie they want and become a part of that movie itself. Bored of his wife Renee, he seeks comfort by taking constant trips into the old movie Horror Express, a movie that these folks secured usage rights for at the cheapest rate they can find his favorite, in order to romance Countess Petrovski while interacting with the characters played by Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. When Renee finds out, however, you know what they say, hell has nothing on a woman scorned.

These folks basically insert Justin Long’s character as a composite into the actual footage of the film, so yes, the grand finale of the second season is basically a glorified YouTube reaction video to an admittedly fun and campy old horror film. I heard that they pulled the actual episode intended for the season closer because it had Marilyn Manson and, at that time, he was—and still is, at the time of writing—facing some legal issues that caused the folks behind this show to consider him a liability. So, they had to improvise at the last minute and this is the result.

If that rumor were true, I guess that could explain why this episode is what it is, a glorified tribute with a “twist” that attempts to justify psychotically disproportionate retribution as okay because the person doing it is a woman. The whole thing is a pointless waste of time, honestly, and the only good thing about it is is that it may get some folks to check out Horror Express. Now that is a fun horror film made in a time when folks seemed to have a good pulse on what makes horror works—something that cannot be applied to the folks behind this season.

This second season is actually worse than the first one, which had some decent episodes, and I heard that this show has been renewed for a third season. How sad that the “horror renaissance” of this modern age is reduced to people lazily throwing tropes into their shows and relying on dumb jump scares to carry everyone to the finish line.

Anyway, this season is done, and meh. All that wasted potential, all those missed opportunities—what a sad, sad waste.