The setting, a sprawling storage unit building, is a maze-like collection of corridors and storage units: A dingy and confusing location that fits perfectly into the liminal spaces that are popular in horror at the moment. In parallel to the seemingly endless and identical corridors is the constant building of tension. With the protagonist's racism, each other character seems like a potential problem. Will the black storage building owner snap after what is clearly years of disrespect? Will the Spanish-speaking woman who openly curses him get her revenge? Will the mysterious and shady German collector of the arcane betray him?

When the reveal finally comes, and with it the body horror, it hangs in the air for a moment, letting the audience really savour it. As the opening short in an anthology, it brings strong promise. A balance of what feels like an age-old cautionary tale with a very current setting, strong acting and incredible quality visuals bodes incredibly well for the shorts that follow. It is curated and introduced by the body-horror (and scales-forward) Guillermo del Toro, so while he isn't the director of any or the writer of most of the scripts and short stories, he is happy to put his name and face centre stage. Lot 36 is his script and his short story, and is definitely well worth watching for any horror fan.

The repeated themes of depicting abusive relationships is annoying. Each story is fine and valid, but as a collection it's an uncomfortable trend. Likewise, the Creepshow tagline "12 terrifying tales of terror" is as inaccurate as it is cheesy. The scares are few and far between, and this short is almost devoid of frights.

Lake Champlain is a real lake, situated on the border of USian states Vermont and New York (and peeking up into Canadian province Quebec) and the monster, Champy, is a real legend. Familiarity with the area and the legend may improve or ruin the story, but looking it up afterwards makes for a nice bonus to the story.

Everything seems to have gone perfectly for everyone, and the protagonist gets a second chance to have a magic leech. Tension at max, just as he's seconds away from the treatment and the apparent perfection is at an eleven out of ten... the body horror comes in. On live TV.

If suspicious miracle cures and unexplained science aren't enough to give you the creeps, the idea of creatures growing inside you like the Alien chestburster is sickening. Well-executed, the horrifying chaos that ensues is full of obvious influences; The Thing, Alien, Scanners, to name a few. A little exposition and a little moralising later, and the everyman lands a triumphant end to the story. Overall, a much better short than some of the previous ones.

The sexual assault and child abuse are thrown in as rapidly and carelessly as everything else, leaving them as a bad taste shock tactic. Instead of a dark, real-life horror, it feels like it's just shoehorned in for the sake of being edgy. What could have been a few reasonable shorts is instead a confusing mess. The ending introduces zombies, confusing what could have been a plot pay off. Dropping its half of the episode, this one is not worth watching.

Well acted, it holds up it's half of the episode, but not much more. There are an abundance of horror tropes seemingly for the sake of it. A mortician, a stormy night, a film noir filter... these do not a scary short make. 

Corporate drama becomes relationship drama becomes stealth plot becomes trapped plot; Lydia's attempt to sneak the dead body out of the building ultimately fails when the lift breaks down. The portrayal of the corpse is good, giving a strong sense of possibility. Either Lydia's escalating panic makes her so paranoid she worries the dead body is moving, or Celia's dying rage empowers her corpse to move and cause Lydia's own demise.

The double edged sword of being stuck in a lift with a dead body but not being able to wait to be rescued (because of the dead body) gave me an ever-increasing horror factor. Elevator problems do happen, and whether or not it's an urban legend, the door decapitation feels possible. Once again, Creepshow doesn't live up to it's "terrifying tales of terror" tagline, but definitely lives up to it's name. Lydia Layne's Better Half is a really creepy short.

Again, Creepshow isn't a nightmare-inducer, but does give you... well... the creeps. The monsters visuals are eerie and the balance between realism and fantasy gives it a continual scary feeling. There's a good sense of era setting, the characters are well-rounded and the ending is both surprising and satisfying. 

This feels more like a dark fantasy, especially due to it's moral ending, but is still an enjoyable little short. The main character is more believable than the easily-evil friend and girlfriend, or the too-nice man in the suitcase. A little over the top, for sure, but it doesn't ruin it. The mysterious man is so apologetic and kind, which makes you wonder why. Who is after him? How did he get in the case? It all comes together in a very neat ending, even if the moral learned seems like something you wouldn't have to teach people.

Despite being like mobsters shaking down people for protection, the main characters have a strong sense of sadness and anger; they aren't two dimensional baddies and you have to wonder... why? At the end, when the whole story is finally revealed, the true horror can set in. Now we know who they are and what happened, and what is it that the people were afraid of them doing... now the fantastical elements can fade out and we can be afraid of what human beings are really capable of.

The direct fear of being in that position and the adult fear of losing a child in any way makes this a damn good horror story. It's not the surprises or things like zombies and ghosts that really keep us up at night, its the stories that make us think, what if that happened to me? This hits that place, at least for me. Fair warning, its a bit of a gory event.

Another thing this short has which is unusual in horror is that the fear for the viewer is not that we find ourselves in the protagonists position, but in an unseen one. While he has the horror of witnessing the creature and getting the consequences, the real danger is being someone else. If he's right, the monster's out there, and his rant lists all kinds of people who might find themselves in it's sights. Though the mental health aspect implies he's hallucinating it all, there is the classic cliffhanger idea that it might just be true.