User Reviews

This episode 2 from season 2 of "Shudder's" "Creepshow" series has two okay tale segments that twist with fear and fright as with the gore, blood, scenes ,and score you the viewer get a vintage feel back to the old classic 1982 original film. The stories are "Dead& Breakfast/Pesticide".

The first "Dead & Breakfast" involves a brother and sister(C. Thomas Howell and Ali Larter) who run a vintage bed and breakfast hotel in which in the past grandmother once ruled. And they both believe and tell stories of past hauntings and murders. So the blood and gore sparks an ideal for haunt for profit as they open up the old resting house for tours. Only things twist as real doom and death lies beneath!

"Pesticide" involves a lonely man who works a dead end job for King's exterminator company and upon spraying pest when he's asked to take a job to rid human pest from the owner(Keith David) of an old building the guilt insect fever takes over it's like bugs on the brain!(Really the segment feels like the classic "They Are Creeping Up on You"!). Overall two good decent fright fear tales with gore and haunt and they both twist plus they have vintage feel which pays homage to the classic film.

The first story is okay. It doesn't have any supernatural elements, but Ali Larter is okay as the woman who is driven nuts by a failing business and her obsession with her grandmother. While C. Thomas Howell goes from the "normal guy" to someone driven to madness by his sister's obsession and the failing business. He's a murderer so he needs a 'Creepshow'-style comeuppance, but you feel more pity for him than anything. Iman Benson is okay as an influencer. Kind of annoying, but aren't they all?

I get the impression 'Dead and Breakfast' was intended mostly as a commentary on the Internet community, the true crime genre, and the obsession of the Internet with the "next big things". If you freeze frame and read the scroll of comments on the podcast, eh are kinda amusing and probably what viewers would think.

Overall, it's nice to see Larter back, and Howell doing... something.

The second story, 'Pesticide', is a bit of a mess, mainly because it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Josh McDermott is one of those "buttcrack blur collar workers", but makes the character Harlan King annoying. Keith David and Ashley Lawrence are okay, and kick the segment up a notch or two. But there's one too many "dream within a dream" segment, and it's not clear if Harlan is imagining anything. Or if Murdoch is bringing on the hallucinations (if they are hallucinations). And then Brenda the therapist starts acting creepy and like she knows Harlan planted the roaches, but then comes back and swats him dead, apparently unwittingly.

And then Murdoch shows up at the end as an exterminator, and does a sinister laugh as only Keith David can do. And I'd pay good money to see Keith D play Satan. But... is that what he's doing? Harlan calls him the Devil, but it Murdoch the Devil? If so, he seems engaged in pretty small potatoes. Or maybe he's a roach somehow turned into human and trying to get revenge on them. Or maybe he's just a businessman as he and (initially) Harlan originally says. But then how does he turn up at the end as an exterminator? Harlan is a jerk, sure, but he doesn't kill anyone until Murdoch pays him a lot of money to do it. And even then, Harlan doesn't go through with it. He kills the homeless man in self-defense after the guy comes after Harlan with a knife. And Harlan drops the poison in the soup by accident. And how does anything leak out of its containment vial?

Brenda doesn't do anything we see to deserve a visit from the Big D. Or be made an unwitting killer. Nor does Harlan deserve death at her hands for putting some roaches in her house. Even if she knew it for sure, and she only suspects. And that's the problem with the whole segment: it's irony without a punchline. Harlan kills vermin! Harlan hallucinates bugs growing giant-sized and attacking him! Harlan gets shrunk to bug size... somehow. Is it all hallucinations? Who knows? Who cares? Harland isn't even dopily likable in the way that Jody Verdill was in the first movie.

So overall the second segment is a loser. Big time. It's saved only by Keith David's performance, and the F/X for the giant bugs. But that's it.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

First story was alright but a bit on the lame side, I thought there was one twist too many towards the end of the story, I also didn't buy that C Thomas Howell was her brother, he was her hip uncle at best! It's nice to see these familiar faces, especially Ashley Laurence in the second story, she's still beautiful, it's a shame they didn't give her a better part. I don't know what the hell they were thinking in Pesticides or whatever it was called, at first it plays pretty straightforward and I was onboard, Keith David gets more wonderful to watch and listen to the older he gets and his demand of the exterminator was disturbing and he was epic and sinister, but then the tale just seems to go off the rails completely as the exterminator I guess suffers guilt over what he's done or maybe starts to suffer the effects of his own bug poisons as he experiences one weird hallucination involving oversized pests after another, and I loved the one with the giant rat, the rats gross tail slithering off the bed did give me a little chill, but you couldn't tell what the hell was going on, and then his therapist was a witch or something and she somehow made him tiny and squashed him like a bug whaaaaat?? It didn't set her up that way at all, it just came smack out of nowhere and came off as completely stupid and horribly sloppy, I really hope the rest of the stories are a little more well done than this was. I enjoyed it because it's new and it's goofy light horror and there are practical effects involved and it's Creepshow related but pick it up guys, get your s$$t together! Fun but what a mess of a episode.. X.

I know Greg Nicotero is known for his work on TWD but grabbing Josh (Eugene) for the second story and even filming at previous TWD locations made the second story painful to watch and creepy in a sex offender sort of way while trying to pull a specific audience.