‘Creepshow’ Season 4 Episode 3 Recap: “Parent Death Trap” + “To Grandmother’s House We Go”

The third episode of Creepshow Season 4 on Shudder is delightful. It’s light, fleet, the two shorts complement one another, and the balance between gore and chuckles is… perfect. It’s such a rare feat to pull off once, much less twice, that I watched the episode from the beginning, once done, just to be sure. What a treat.

Start with P. J. Pesce’s “Parent Death Trap” where woebegone loser Lyle (Dylan Sloane), henpecked by his blue-blood parents Gloria (Loretta Walsh) and Archibald (Shaughnessy Redden), is humiliated when the date with beautiful Violet (Chloe Babcook) which his parents have arranged for him ends in her standing him up. Pushed to breaking by his parents’ mocking, Lyle loses his shit and does a little patri- and matricide to find the unrestful spirits of his folks instantly returned to continue their negging. Imagine Thurston Howell and Lovie coming back from the grave to berate Gilligan and you’ve got the idea. I have to mention, too, how fantastic it was to have Archibald shout at Lyle for not sharpening the sword Lyle’s in the process of using to behead him. It’s a Sam Raimi moment and, chef’s kiss, Creepshow.

Reminding me a lot of that Harlan Ellison story “Mom” from his Strange Wine collection (or Woody Allen’s “Oedipus Wrecks” segment from New York Stories), four years pass and fate reunites Lyle with Violet in the frozen aisle. They fall in love under the disapproving glare of his spectral folks, and then things get weird. “Parental Death Trap” is fun and smart. Its plot is twisty but not confusing, obvious in hindsight but a complete surprise as it unfolds. I don’t want to tell too much, but I do want to say that its central conceit is brilliant and avoids doing the easy stuff like fixating on Lyle’s trauma or working in some sort of grand irony about his parents’ fortune. Its resolution is both simpler and more complicated and… look, if you only watch one episode of this season, it should be this one. Stephen King spotters will be well-pleased with another cat named “Church” after the feline hero of King’s Pet Sematary; and the revelation that the whole of this short is set in Castle Rock county.

“Parental Death Trap” is such a pleaser that I worried the next, “To Grandmother’s House We Go,” would be anticlimactic. Imagine my surprise that it matches the energy and humor while adding a very convincing werewolf to its tale of a bombshell gold digger getting her comeuppance on the way to grandma’s house. The swindler-in-question is brassy Marcia (Keegan Connor Tracy), doing her best Marisa Tomei-from-My Cousin Vinny as she’s saddled with the care of a little girl, Ruby (Emma Oliver), as a condition of her eventual inheritance. When grandma Belinda (Marion Eisman) falls ill, Marcia is forced to transport Emma through a dark wood as a gesture of good faith. Did I squeal when Ruby emerges in a red riding hood when called to go? Reader, I did. Like a schoolgirl. 

It takes a while to get going the first time through — the second time, I understood better the need to set Marcia up as an unrepentantly self-absorbed narcissist. The jokes are funnier, Tracy’s performance is richer, and when the car breaks down and the monster attacks, the moral transformation Marcia undergoes is as startling as any supernatural metamorphosis. I think that’s the cleverness of “To Grandmother’s House We Go,” that in a real way it’s the story of a monster who transforms into a human being rather than the other way around. I will confess, too, that there’s a jump scare in this little film that made my heart hurt — even though I suspected it was coming. There’s real pathos to this piece that starts out as broad burlesque. I can’t find higher praise for it and for how its broad themes of greed and sacrifice rhyme with “Parent Death Trap.” Bravo. More like this, please.

Walter Chaw is the Senior Film Critic for filmfreakcentral.net. His book on the films of Walter Hill, with introduction by James Ellroy, is now available.