‘Creepshow’ Season 4 Episode 2 Recap: “The Hat” + “Grieving Process”

The second episode of Shudder’s Creepshow Season 4 opens with Kailey & Sam Spear’s “The Hat,” a clever hybrid of two of my favorite concepts: the artist’s bargain and the mind-control pod. In it, struggling horror writer Jay (Ryan Beil) shares his woes with his publisher Nicole (Marlee Walchuk) when he notices a display in her office housing the hat of legendary novelist Bachman (David Beairsto). Turns out, once worn, the hat gives its host a bottomless well of saleable stories. It’s a familiar premise well-told with Jay’s inevitable physical decline carried off with good nature and a perfect amount of gross-out. Once his long-suffering wife Astrid (Sara Canning) leaves for greener pastures, “The Hat” pivots from a supernatural possession kind of thing into an Invasion of the Body Snatchers one where the hat is just the shell for some kind of alien hermit crab.

I have always loved the idea of finding a thing that eases the labor of writing, and the suggestion that the best stories come from the resurrection and harvesting of the dead is a compelling one to me, too. For the previous owner of the hat to be named “Bachman” after Stephen King’s infamous nom de plume is just the chantilly on top for a series that has made it a point to offer frequent callbacks to its literary father. What I appreciate is that once the possibilities for the premise are close to exhaustion, “The Hat” pivots and suddenly I’m wondering why it is the crab monsters want to make humans more creative — or is the creativity just a kind of brain damage? And if it’s brain damage, why the ability to write also an evolutionary adaptation? That’s a lot of richness in a twenty-minute short film, executed with verve and a nice, light tone all the way through to its grim conclusion. It’s a strange vision of the apocalypse, this prophecy of the end of the humanity because of endless creativity, and in its own way the best prediction of how AI might kill us. All AI needs, after all, is a project it prioritizes over everything else — the manufacture of plastic forks, for instance — and there go the last of our natural resources.

Less loaded is the second short, “Grieving Process,” directed by Kailey & Sam Spear again, but featuring none of the lightness and energy of “The Hat.” In this one, professional chef Richard (Sachin Sahel), married to career woman April (Rachel Drance) when one day, something terrible happens and April is returned to Richard traumatized, the shell of her former self. Cast in the role of caretaker, I thought for a while he’d engage in an affair with sister-in-law Jean (Maemae Renfrow), thus leading to a classic EC Comics adultery melodrama, but it turns into a creature more like a zombie or plague premise as April starts to transform into something awful. There are a lot of ideas looking for a foothold in “Grieving Process,” and I don’t know that any of them really find enough breathing room. 

Trauma and its caretakers by itself is a rich topic — the way April’s personality changes is a strong metaphor for behavioral derangements post-event — but beyond noting that she’s becoming violent and mean, it doesn’t seem to know where to go with it. Richard’s profession seems to be the next story point as he adjusts his cooking habits to fit April’s new appetites. He’s essentially recast as a vampire’s familiar, but doesn’t that demonize the victim of an assault? And how about the sister-in-law who seems to take April’s rejection of her personally for some reason before disappearing for a while again for no reason and then reappearing for the purposes, as far as I can tell, of plot expedience?

Later, there’s a cop, a little girl, a surprise reveal that is meant to blunt the sexual assault suggestion, I think, but why? It does beg the question of whether sexual assault should ever be used as a red herring. If you raise the specter of it, I think you’re committed to play it out. “Grieving Process,” in other words, works as a metatextual metaphor more than a successful, self-contained piece — and if you’re looking for what this looks like when it works, check out Claire Denis’ still-breathtaking Trouble Every Day. 

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.