All who trick are treats in Creeping Death. The SCREAMBOX Exclusive supernatural slasher streams on September 10. Halloween was always Tim’s favorite holiday – until his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Now, all he wants is a quiet night in. That is quickly disrupted when his friends pay him an unwanted visit after stealing a mysterious sack from the doorstep of a local crazy. This sacrilegious act unleashes the Aos Si, a Celtic spirit that walks the earth on Halloween. They must band together and survive the night or make the ultimate offering… their lives.

Man, I love the old Slasher formula.

Get yourself an iconic killer. A group of young characters who vary greatly in likability. An old character to futiley warn them about the impending doom. Throw in some awful dialogue and realistic sets. And add just a touch of bare breasts for tastefulness. Boom! You got yourself a Slasher movie, baby.

And that’s just what Creeping Death provides as it goes back to the tried-and-true formula of the 1970’s through 1990’s to bring us their modern take on the ideas of the beloved genre. They hit all of the renowned notes; they bring everything they have with gusto. Did they succeed in creating something that will live on with the classics? Let’s check the Ups and Downs to see!

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ We’ll kick things off in the Ups with one of everyone’s favorite devices: the Up (or Down) that I can’t go that heavily into because it’s a spoiler! Sorry, but… sometimes you have to take what you can get.

And what you can get in Creeping Death is an incredibly shocking turn late in the third act that I did not see coming! With characters dying left and right as the Aos Si tears his way through our protagonists, we ultimately come down to two heroes left and the monster closing in.

What happens from that moment on, though, genuinely caught me by surprise and shocked me! Which is always nice of a movie to do, you know? It’s great to be taken aback. Now… is the payoff to the turn as good as the turn itself? It is not. But for one glorious moment, the flick held me in the palm of its hand and had me all the way invested.

+ I’m not going to lie here: Creeping Death was far from a spectacular movie. And thus, it was a little hard to find Ups as I watched its 94 minute runtime chug along.

But what I will give the movie credit for are the physical design and special effects used to bring the Aos Si to life. It’s a terrifying looking beastie, and Creeping Death knows its limitations, so it does its best to hide him in shadows or otherwise not fully show him. And because of this, his design–especially the eyes–is maximized to work effectively in the dark.

His presence is ominous and fearsome, and one area the film really nails is showcasing its ultimate threat. Which is almost a shame because…

– It takes Creeping Death 50 minutes until Aos Si really shows up! One of the best aspects of the movie, and we are kept waiting and waiting and waiting as our protagonists deal with bags of dead dogs and relationship drama and Trick or Treaters instead. I’m sure this was all budgetary–it’s easier and cheaper to show a few twenty-somethings driving around bickering and call that character development than it is to have a well-designed but expensive menace chasing them–but that doesn’t change the fact that it creates a real drag on the watching experience.

I’d have given anything to have swapped out some of our characters’ inane arguing with some running from the Aos Si. But even foregoing that, the sick mother subplot is very engaging, but Creeping Death writes her off by sending her to bed in the first act, and that’s almost the last we see of her. If not more of the Aos Si, I could have used more of her dynamic with Tim.

But unfortunately, we didn’t get that, either. So we just wait for the demon to emerge fifty minutes into the film.

– I seem to be cursed as of late with watching movies that have some really poor sound mixing and editing in outdoor scenes, and that carried through to this effort. Most notably, one scene with Tim and his dad talking outside is gutted by the sounds of cars driving by. I simply could not pay attention to the characters on the screen when all I could hear was… vrooooom! Vroom! It was painful.

The movie has a few other such failings in the realm of technical aspects. There are some herky-jerky editing cuts, as well. Those are easier to forgive because you get the sense that the crew is young and still learning its craft. They’ll get there eventually, but as of now, Creeping Death suffered some growing pains.

OVERALL

This one makes me sad to grade because the ingredients are all here, and with some seasoning and a bigger budget, Creeping Death could have been quite a fun movie. It has all the callbacks to the great slasher era of the 1980’s that I love. And while many of the movies from that bygone era had flaws, they were more charming ones. The filmmakers involved in Creeping Death show a lot of promise, but they just aren’t there yet. I’d be very interested to see how they grow across their next few efforts, though!