52 Weeks: Scares in the Chase

Creature Feature (2015)
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (6 out of 10 stars)
Director: Chase Smith
Producers: Chase Smith, Edward Boss
Starring: Tenille Houston, Libby Blanton, Lance Paul, Jason Vail, Giana Alexis Cambria, Austin Freeman

“See… there is nothing in the closet, Jack.” – Jack’s Father

The Review:

Ah, my dear companions of the shadows, welcome once again to our 52 Weeks of Halloween. Tonight, we gather around the flickering, ghostly glow of the screen to inspect a curious little beast—one stitched together from nostalgia, mischief, and the sort of gleeful wickedness that delights in rattling the closet door long after midnight.

Having grown up along a desolate, winding country road in a tiny North Carolina town, and later finding my education amid the haunted, moss-draped squares of Savannah, Georgia, before settling beneath the misty hush of the Shenandoah, I possess, shall we say, a longstanding intimacy with the macabre. I know the pulse of small-town dread. I know the whispered menace of folk legends, the campfire tale told too softly, the nursery-room bogey with its patient smile. So when the autumn winds carried whispers of Creature Feature, directed by Chase Smith, my curiosity was not merely piqued—it was positively summoned. Here, I suspected, was a filmmaker reaching back toward the giddy, grotesque pleasures that shaped so many of us who came of age with late-night horror and VHS-box promises of mayhem.

And indeed, that is very much the spirit of the thing. Creature Feature is campy, rowdy, scrappy, and above all, fun. Not polished in the antiseptic modern sense, no—but alive. It is precisely the sort of picture best enjoyed in its natural environment: a loud Halloween gathering, a roomful of friends, a bowl of bad candy, and perhaps something bracing in the glass. It understands that horror need not always aspire to solemn prestige. Sometimes it need only grin, bare its fangs, and leap at you from the dark with enough gusto to make you laugh and recoil in equal measure.

Smith shows admirable ambition in structuring the film with the bones of a Halloween anthology. That alone earns a certain respect from me, for anthology horror is no easy cadaver to reanimate. It requires rhythm, tonal balance, and a framing device sturdy enough to hold the patchwork together. Happily, the connective tissue here proves stronger than one might expect, binding the various grisly impulses into something that feels cohesive enough to carry us along. There is affection in the construction—real affection—for the form, for the genre, and for the audience likely to appreciate such lovingly disreputable pleasures.

The performances are solid, and more importantly, committed. No one seems to be standing apart from the material with embarrassment, which is often the death rattle of lesser camp. Rather, the cast steps into the madness with sufficient conviction to keep the machinery humming. They do not all ascend to the heights of immortal horror sainthood, perhaps, but they ground the film where it matters and keep its blood pumping. In a picture such as this, sincerity is worth far more than polish, and sincerity Creature Feature possesses.

I was also struck by the camerawork, which at times proves more elegant than one might anticipate from a film so cheerfully rough-edged. There is a visual attentiveness here, a desire not merely to record chaos but to shape it. The gore, meanwhile, is employed with enough restraint to avoid numbing excess. That is no small thing. So many modern low-budget horrors mistake quantity for effect, drowning every scene in viscera until all sensation is flattened. Creature Feature is wiser than that. It understands that a well-placed gruesome flourish, properly timed, can do far more than an endless hose of blood.

And yet, alas, every monster limps somewhere. The sound and lighting occasionally falter in ways that cannot quite be excused by charm alone. There are moments when the technical roughness pulls one out of the spell, and not gently. One can forgive much in independent horror—indeed, I often do—but one still feels the absence when atmosphere is undercut by uneven execution. These are not fatal wounds, but they are wounds nonetheless.

Still, the film survives them, and perhaps even thrives because of them, for its true appeal lies in its spirit. This is not horror made by cynics, nor by those eager to sand every strange edge into marketable smoothness. This is horror made by someone who appears to love the rowdy, disreputable, glorious mess of 1980s and 90s genre filmmaking—the era when movies were permitted to be imperfect, exuberant, strange, and gloriously themselves. Creature Feature does not feel manufactured; it feels conjured. Its clunkier moments do not wholly diminish it. If anything, they become part of its texture, the rough grain in the wood that reminds you this thing was built by hand.

That, in the end, is where my affection for the film resides. Not in the notion that it is flawless—it most certainly is not—but in the fact that it dares to be lively, playful, and unashamed of its own wicked grin. It wants to entertain you. It wants to charm you with a little blood, a little absurdity, and a little Halloween mischief. And honestly, my friends, there is something rather noble in that.

So yes, I bestow upon this raucous little nightmare a respectable 6 out of 10 stars. If you are of the collegiate persuasion—or simply young enough at heart to appreciate a rowdy midnight fright—you could do far worse than inviting this one to your Halloween festivities. It is a blood-speckled party guest, somewhat rumpled perhaps, but lively company all the same.

And to sweeten the invitation still further, I have heard whispered mutterings from beyond the crypt that Mr. Smith is remastering the picture, refining its audio and color for a sharper resurrection. By my derby bowler, that is an enticing prospect indeed. One does so enjoy the thought of a creature returning from the slab stronger, sharper, and ready for a second lunge at the throat.

Turn down the lights, lock your doors against the howling wind, and let the feature begin.

Yes child, there is more…so much more. See what you have missed: T. Glenn Bane’s 52 Weeks of Halloween Index.