Almost every episode in the Shudder horror anthology series Creepshow (which is a continuation of the franchise George A. Romero and Stephen King began with the film Creepshow back in 1982) is split into two separate stories, and the first story in the second episode of the show’s fourth season is tied back to the very beginning of the show... behind the scenes, anyway. That’s because this first story, called The Hat, was written by the duo of Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi, who previously worked on Creepshow to write an adaptation of the Stephen King short story Gray Matter for the premiere episode. Willinger and de Blasi didn’t contribute any further stories to season 1 and they missed out on seasons 2 and 3, but here they are, back for season 4.
The Hat was also brought to the screen by a duo: twin sister directors Kailey Spear and Sam Spear, neither of whom had any prior Creepshow credits. They had horror anthology experience, though, having directed a few episodes of the CW show Two Sentence Horror Stories. They made their Creepshow debut in kind of a big way, because this episode basically serves as a Spear sisters showcase: they directed both of the stories that make up its 53 minute running time, and they did a good job of presenting the stories in the traditional Creepshow style.
The Hat stars Ryan Beil – an actor who is eerily reminiscent of Jon Lovitz in a lot of ways – as novelist Jay, who is struggling with writers block while trying to meet the deadline for his latest work. His agent (Marlee Walchuk) suggests using a good luck charm to break the block, so he procures a homburg hat that was worn by his idol, best-selling author Stephen Bachman (the name being a tribute to Stephen King and his pen name Richard Bachman), who mysteriously walked away from writing world after delivering multiple classics. As soon as Jay places that hat on his head, he writes like a man possessed, dropping so many words onto the page in such a short period of time, it’s clear this hat is giving him abilities beyond normal human capabilities. Of course, he gets extremely attached to it, his personal life falls apart, he loses his significant other (played by Sara Canning), and we’re in for a horrific twist.
As a writer who is often trying to pack a lot of writing into a short period of time and has many ideas in mind that I don’t have time to type out, I enjoyed watching how The Hat plays out, and was almost left wishing I had such a hat of my own... until I saw exactly what was going on with Jay’s hat. This was a pretty cool story that I could definitely imagine being featured in a comic book like Creepshow is meant to be (inspired by the old school horror comic books from EC Comics).
The episode’s second story, Grieving Process, marks the Creepshow debut of Mike D. McCarty, who wrote the script with Creepshow regular John Esposito, who previously contributed the season 1 story Night of the Paw, the season 2 stories Model Kid and Within the Walls of Madness, and the season 3 stories Skeletons in the Closet and Meter Reader. This one begins with a woman named April (Rachel Drance) being attacked and left with a neck wound after work one night. Her husband Richard (Sachin Sahel) and Jean (MaeMae Renfrow) are there to support April as she recovers from the attack... but there’s something different about her now. April’s behavior has changed, her eating habits change, and since this is a horror story we can be fairly certain that this isn’t a case of post-traumatic stress. No, there’s something horrific and probably supernatural going on here.
Grieving Process has a very different vibe from The Hat, allowing the Spear sisters to show off the fact that they can work with different tones and styles of horror, even within the same episode of a series. It’s an interesting story that’s well-told and features some nice creature effects. With the combined strengths of The Hat and Grieving Process, the second episode of Creepshow season 4 manages to be a step up from the first episode of the season. It’s always a good thing to see when a season gets better as it goes.
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