Main cast: Samantha Sloyan (Lorna Snell), Ruth Codd (Cassandra), Franckie Francois (Okwe), Carey Jones (The Monster), Nick Heffelfinger (The Delivery Guy), Matthew James Dowden (James Harris), Lucie Guest (Sarah Harris), Max Archibald (Max), Roberto Lanzas (The Photographer), Daniel Ian Joeck (The Maitre D’), Claire Friesen (The Waitress), Aleksandra Cross (The Excited Young Woman), and Mateo Deuma (Gabriel)
Directors: Greg Nicotero and John Harrison
In Twenty Minutes With Cassandra, Lorna Snell has just come home and she’s ordered a pizza for herself when she hears a pounding on the door. She lets a terrified Fairuza Balk-wannabe, Cassie in, only have the latter throw away Lorna’s phone and tells Lorna that she is going to die.
You see, Cassie is chased by a monster, and this monster will kill anyone that tries to help her. So yes, Cassie has doomed Lorna, but to make up for it, she’s going to try to make Lorna’s last few minutes meaningful. I’m sure Lorna will appreciate that.
Naturally, Lorna thinks Cassie is cray cray… until she answers the door and a monster brutally eviscerates a delivery guy. Oh no, so the monster is real!
Cassie is a horrible character to sit through with, and that’s by design, so while I’m mad, I would happily jump out a window than to spend another minute listening to her babbling in that annoying voice while looking like an obnoxious clown school dropout.
Once that character exits the segment—sadly, not in a body bag—the segment morphs into something more extraordinary, sublime, philosophical. Instead of the forced humor coming from Cassie’s mouth, the balance of humor and poignancy hits just right. I find myself watching, rapt… and then it ends.
What a shame. This segment would have been so much more of a home run had it either spent as much time on the rest of the episode as it did on Cassie stinking up the room or cut down on those scenes to pave way for more better ones.
Smile is a much shorter segment, and a more straightforward one too.
James Harris is a photographer high from winning some humanitarian award for his works. As expected, he’s the guy of the moment because he’s hot and he’s the kind of lip service activist that appeals to champagne socialists and such.
While celebrating with his wife Sarah at a posh restaurant, the camera-shy James is surprise photographed by a mysterious guy. He then hands over the Polaroid, and that Polaroid puzzles them both because the man would have to be a distant away to capture it.
Even stranger, the mysterious fellow leaves behind a trail of Polaroids with phrases like “I SEE YOU” and “SAVE ME” outside the restaurant. Even more bizarre, each Polaroids capture them at the very moment they are holding that Polaroid!
Ooh, this is a curious mystery indeed!
Actually, the bigger mystery here is how the two lead actors are cast, because they are pretty awful. Matthew James Dowden and Lucie Guest seem to be reading their lines out loud from a teleprompter, and their efforts to emote are pretty ratchet.
Also, the person responsible for the clues seems to expect James to be able to calculate the angles in the Polaroids to look at the precise spot for the grand clue. How lucky that James doesn’t just lose the plot and decide to go home for some post-celebratory nookie with the wife!
So yes, one half-way great episode, and one very mediocre waste of time. One step forward, two steps back—that’s the Creepshow I remember, so, er, welcome back?
