Supposedly this show had a budget of 2 million dollars per episode - supposedly. I'm presuming most of that money went to the 15 or 16 producers listed because it surely is not on the screen.
To call the first two episodes tedious is paying them a compliment. In the first one alone literally nothing happens until the last couple of minutes and even then the mood is destroyed by an anti-climax which makes no sense whatsoever. The director makes the typical amateur mistake of never allowing the camera to move - EVER - which adds to the staged phoniness of the piece. Combine that with the obvious lack of money to spend (for example, a massive hurricane which consists of a couple of shots of flashing clouds and a couple of actors hit with a fan - no rain whatsoever anywhere, mind you . .) and you've got a millennial version of the low-rent Tales from the Darkside, which it clearly aspires to be.
The highly publicized "Creep" puppet looks like a fire-sale Spirit Halloween leftover, with cross-eyed mechanics and a barely mobile "ack-ack" mouth as its sole range of movement. According to fan sites, a ton of money was spent on this prop, which could easily have been surpassed by a cheap sock puppet . . the Crypt Keeper has nothing to worry about, (and still, an even WORSE version of the character was computer-generated for the title sequence for some strange reason in a wonderful example of throwing good money after bad.)
Neither story made any sense at all and both had ridiculous endings to tie them up, as though the production said "screw it, we're out of money, just tear the last few pages out." For Stephen King to be associated with this in any way is a travesty.
Still, I'm sure old fanboys will gush over this as it's clearly a love-letter to the 1980s when floppy rubber monsters were considered the height of technology. The fact that the makeup department got credited FOUR TIMES during the course of the end credits is a sure indication that's all they cared about.
Watch the original movie instead and pretend this monstrosity doesn't exist . . it'll only make you weep.
