Writer: Chase Smith
Director: Chase Smith
Creature Feature is an indie portmanteau movie that proudly displays its inspiration in the pulp horror comics of the 1950s. This is also reflected in some excellently realised comic book style cut-scenes.
The film starts with a very short teaser that I confess caught me out. From there we move on to the main story. The frame this time is a group of young people meeting up for a costume party on a foggy Halloween night. Of course, they decide to tell each other scary stories.
The first of these is far and away my favourite, and not just because it involves a creepy clown. There’s not much of a story to it, you know exactly where it’s going. However Smith’s direction builds up a huge amount of tension. It’s essentially one long, extended “wait for it…” moment and works very well.
Unfortunately the rest of the stories don’t live up to the promise of the film’s start. Although they span various sub-genres they share the clown story’s predictability without its style or atmosphere. A knowing, tongue-in-cheek approach sits uneasily with attempts at scares. There’s also an unusually high number of non-erotic shots of people shagging!
Smith tries to spice things up by adding a few links between the stories, mainly in the form of a Spring Heeled Jack character. Unfortunately Jack is simply used as an excuse for lazy story telling; instead of bothering with any logic, just say “Jack did it”. This is particularly telling in the segment involving a man about to do dreadful things to a naked woman strapped to a table. This has a wonderfully nasty atmosphere and made my skin creep without the usual excesses of torture porn. Then it just stops.
So there’s a definite pattern here. Smith’s direction is great and he can build up a good atmosphere, unfortunately his story telling abilities are less effective.
Creature Feature is a competent and ambitious little film. When it hits the mark it works really well, unfortunately for much of the time the script isn’t strong enough for it to reach the target.