Director: Rusty Cundieff
First Aired: 2021
Contains spoilers
The Creepshow TV series got a third season and the opening episode (and first segment) Mums was one where we can see a vampiric plant – though it is perhaps a tad more than that, as we’ll see, but there is also a reach back that would seem to deliberately nod towards a more famous vampiric plant.
The episode starts with Jack (Brayden Benson) on his family land, feeding their pigs – he sees dad, Hank (Ethan Embry), leave in his truck. When he goes in his mom, Bloom (Erin Beute, Vampire Diaries), talks about his (great x3) ‘Meemaw’ who is turning 100 and suggests visiting her. However her travel plans seem rushed and, as they leave, Hank is there with friends Beth (Malone Thomas) and Connor (Lowrey Brown, also Vampire Diaries).
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| Erin Beute as Bloom |
Hank accuses her of trying to abscond with his son, checks her bag and finds a clip of money and liquor – accusing her of being a thief and drunk (she denies this and says he planted the ‘evidence’). He and Connor drag Bloom to the sheriff, whilst Beth is left with Jack. ...Jack finds some old photos of his mom and a packet of seeds his mom was taking with them. He drops them into dirt, picks them up and then sees his mom, she screeches as something pours from her mouth – he wakes from his nightmare
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| planting the seeds |
Meanwhile Hank and Connor have killed Bloom. Hank comes up with a story for Jack (though he doesn’t actually use it). And we also see them taking her body, wrapped in a tarp, and burying her in his flowerbed. In the morning, whilst investigating the seeds, Jack accidentally cuts his finger getting blood on them. He plants them anyway just a row away from his mother’s buried body. We also discover that Hank is a domestic terrorist and he fear was that Bloom was going to spill the beans to the feds.
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| drinking Jack's blood |
Anyway, the seeds grow and bloom really quickly. Jack accidentally fertilises them by cutting his hand on a long thorn. At night he hears a piglet squealing and finds it trapped in vines, being dragged towards the new plants. He frees it but the vines grab him and out of the soil his mother’s face emerges, now half plant. She cuts him and takes some of his blood but then pulls him closer and whispers something we can’t hear.
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| feeding through roots |
This, for me, was the really interesting part of the set up – that the plant and body have merged, that she is assimilated into the vegetation but remains aware enough to know that Jack is her son and able to communicate with him. He, essentially, becomes a Seymour character from this point and this connects us to that most famous of vampiric plants, Audrey Jr from Little Shop of Horrors. The connection with this can be seen when we see one of the attacks with what looks like a giant bud with hair, though we also note that the plant will use vines/roots to attack/feed.
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| flowering with skulls |
The other connection with Little Shop was a view of the plant’s flowers after it has fed. The blooms have skulls at their centre – this is similar to the earlier film though the blooms in that have the faces of victims. There isn’t much more in the way of lore and – of course – there is the question of just who will be eaten by the plants and who will survive. The film had to shorthand the characters and motivations due to the running time but did so very competently though some stereotypes had to be employed. I really liked this short segment and it was a great season opener. 6.5 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon US
On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK
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