Summary
A sinister story of three siblings displaced, written by Bede Blake and directed by Lucy Campbell, and it could hardly be better.
This Creeped Out Season 2 Episode 4 recap for the episode titled “The Many Place” contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Four episodes into Creeped Out Season 2 and we have the first episode directed by a woman, Lucy Campbell, and it is excellent: and that’s not just me, a horror fan, talking; but my twelve-year-old son (much closer to the intended demographic) claimed it’s the creepiest story yet.
Creeped Out Season 2 Episode 4 is titled “The Many Place”, in which three British kids on holiday in Australia lose their bearings in a large hotel when one of them (just for fun) presses all the buttons in the lift. I’m not going to give away all the implications, but trust me, it’s downright sinister.
We have the wise local (Paul Moriarty playing the Boiler Man like the clichéd gas station attendant saying “don’t!”), alternative realities, parents who have never heard of their kids, a monster who feeds on the lost, and a trip to Corfu that may never have happened. An empty hotel, lost children, endless corridors and surreal images… not to mention the scary thought of sudden responsibility
To me, “The Many Place” is a metaphor for how overwhelming it can be when a child discovers it’s time to be a grown-up. Growing up can make your head spin, especially for those it’s thrust on suddenly. Nita (Hannah Saxby) is the oldest sibling in this story and she finds herself not only in charge of the younger two, but – when it all goes wrong – in charge of getting them back to where they belong and finding the missing youngest. She has to play a mother figure to them while also drawn to a boy staying in the same hotel, and is deeply unprepared for either. The real star amongst the children is the youngest, Max (Minti Gorne, Transformers: The Last Knight): she is imaginative and resourceful, but mostly just wants to bond with her family, even though her recklessness gets them all into trouble. (Last week’s episode had a troublesome little sister too…)
Bede Blake’s writing for Creeped Out Season 2 Episode 4 is superb: the kids have personalities and issues we can all recognize, but they have their own unique quirks too (such as the rhyme the two girls share). The plot was unlike any other in Creeped Out so far, and not like anything I’ve come across in children’s writing, outside of Doctor Who, perhaps. The direction kept the tension spiraling around the main characters so that even when the pacing was a little choppy (looking at where the lift took them, like in Men in Black), the prospect for them still stayed bleak.
The editing – especially around the maze-like Many Place itself – was so sharp: I’ve not seen a simple hotel corridor so scary since The Shining. The episode was not perfect (there were a couple of poor-acting moments, and even my son recognized the special effects in the lift as “cheap”) but the overall quality was so good that the flaws simply didn’t matter.
You guys made a great team, and a great story: I want more.
