Creepshow Season 3 premiere recap: Mums/Queen Bee

Despite the still-existing global pandemic, Creepshow Season 3 has premiered on Shudder with its third season. In the season premiere, death flowers anew, and a story asks just how far we’d go for fandom.

In the first story, “Mums,” we meet a young man named Jack (Brayden Benson), dutifully feeding pigs at his family’s isolated farmhouse. Short on context, his mom, named Bloom (Erin Beute), shows up, semi-panicked, urging him to join her on a 14-hour bus drive. The destination: To meet his grandmother (or “meemaw,” as they call her).

However, we learn very quickly that it’s more about escaping Jack’s father, Hank (Ethan Embry), who she accuses of being a terrorist. The story progresses pretty quickly as Hank shows up, takes control of Bloom, and, with assistance from Connor (Lowrey Brown), kills Bloom and buries her in the garden near their house.

The death is, perhaps surprisingly, not shown, though we do see Hank and Connor drag her around, then bury her, intending to claim she had jumped from the truck under some mental health episode.  Hank also badmouths Bloom at every opportunity, dismissing her as a drunken pill-popper, among other things.

Creepshow Season 3, Episode 1A gives us more studies on sinister plant life

Meanwhile, after hearing vague news of his mom’s disappearance, Jack looks at old photos to reminisce, then has a strange nightmare about Bloom. Hank lies big-time to Jack later, telling him that Bloom is actually in a halfway house.

Soon we meet Beth (Malone Thomas), who seems decent at first but appears to be in a sexual relationship with Hank. Apparently, she is also coordinating with Hank and Connor for a terrorist attack as part of a neo-Confederate vanguard (or something to that effect—the details are somewhat vague). Jack hears these sparse details, making him lose all his trust in his father, Beth and Connor.

However, there’s another interesting supernatural development with Jack: After cutting his hand on some thorns in Bloom’s garden, some flowers have begun blooming overnight. Jack is initially confused, but he soon sees the plants attack one of their farm’s pigs.

Then, in an even stranger turn of events, the plant grabs Jack’s arm and squeezes blood out, feeding itself while looking for much like his mother (assuring Jack that Bloom must have been killed). Feeling betrayed by everyone around him, Jack whacks them all in the head with his shovel in quite a rapid sequence, then heads off in Hank’s truck to visit the “meemaw” that Bloom spoke so well of.

Though this story seems a bit rushed, it does function as an ode to both the plant segment from the original Creepshow film and a partial homage to Little Shop of Horrors.

Creepshow Season 3, Episode 1B: Queen Bee

The next Creepshow story is a bit more straightforward, though every bit as weird. Trenice (Olivia Hawthorne), Debra (Hannah Kepple) and Carlos (Nico Gomez) all appear to be enraptured by pop star Regina (Kaelynn Harris), with Trenice calling her a queen.

Debra’s mom (Monica Louwerens) shows up, offering her wallet if they want to order pizzas.  However, instead of just hanging out at the house, the trio decides to head to the hospital where Debra’s mom works after learning that Regina is secretly having her baby delivered there.

As one might expect, there are a few horror film nods in this Creepshow episode, including that the place is called Haddonfield-Myers Hospital. When they get there, it’s clear the three really mean business, as they use their cellphone and a selfie stick to trick the outside security camera (I’m honestly not sure if the trick would work, but it’s just them being crafty).

Unfortunately for them, a security guard (Bruce Anthony Shepperson) catches them in the stairwell. A struggle ensues after he grabs Debra’s mom’s key card, and the guard falls downstairs, appearing to be very dead.

The “birth”

As one might expect in Creepshow, the story gets weirder.  The hospital has the lights turned off, and the trio sees a worker wheeling around a corpse. After Trenice knocks over a display rack, we see the hospital worker has glowing green eyes in the dark, and soon we can see additional corpses in the hallways. Undeterred, they investigate further.

They finally see Regina, who looks normal enough at first. However, after the staff gives her a shot, Regina turns into a strange insectoid creature! After Carlos perhaps foolishly takes a photo of Regina’s transformed self, the monster sees them, and some high-pitched frequencies are used to control the minds of the hospital staff. The initial question is, can our three main characters run?

Fandom gone too far

While scrambling to find a plan of action, Debra and Trenice discover that keeping cotton in one’s ears reduces the impact of “Regina’s” sounds. However, Carlos gets too close to the “Queen” and gets stabbed by her stinger (bye-bye!).

Meanwhile, Debra and Trenice must contend with some possessed staff who are guarding the elevators.  Debra distracts one of the mind-controlled workers by throwing a pill bottle, but it doesn’t seem quite good enough.

Debra then stabs it in the eye with a needle. As for the other one that’s choking Trenice in the elevator, Debra zaps its brain with a defibrillator. However, things get complicated when it seems Debra has fallen under the control of Queen Regina. It’s not entirely clear how it works, but it seems Debra is such a super fan that she doesn’t want to reveal the truth about Regina after all.  This suggests that perhaps it’s not just about that high-pitched sound (which might actually be contained in the pop star’s music, thus assuring loyalists for her colony and brood).

Debra tells Trenice that “seeing her live changes you” and intends to have Trenice become baby food, explaining that no one likes a cold meal. So, basically, this Creepshow story is about people who are a little too obsessed with protecting celebrities.

It’s perhaps the most original story of the two contained in the premiere. At the same time, one wonders if Creepshow might eventually try the opposite angle at some point and remind us that sometimes we get carried away with bashing celebrities, even if some of them might deserve it.  Sometimes haters can be monsters, too, right?

What did you think of the Creepshow Season 3 premiere? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.