In the opening minutes of Screambook, a lady named Eleanor hangs out with siblings at a family reunion. She says, “David, how’s your law business going?” The camera cuts to a child wearing Aviator sunglasses. He says, “It’s going fine.”
Then I fell off the couch.
Screambook is a no-fi, shot-on-video (SOV) anthology that reveals an acid-soaked alternate universe where Creepshow was refashioned as a teenage art project on Long Island. The movie includes five stories: “Family Reunion” (a direct rip-off of “Father’s Day” from Creepshow), “Tommy” (a child transforms into a rampaging beast after being locked in a cardboard box for fifteen years), “Secret of the Bottle” (a scientist mutates into a rubber-masked monster after drinking toxic whiskey), “Ye Old Toy Shop” (your guess is as good as mine), and “Worms” (a teacher is slowly overwhelmed by haunted earthworms). All of this might sound lucid and exciting to you. But after “Family Reunion,” you should know that the movie melts into a no-burn labyrinth of screaming children, confused adults, visits from someone’s nana, sick burns (“You stupid brainless freak!”), slow motion abuse, and relentless A/V carnage.
Like Day of the Reaper and Nigel the Psychopath, Screambook is a backyard videodrone made by teenagers that, to most people, will feel like it’s 804 minutes long. For the rest of us, it will still feel like it’s 804 minutes long—but we’ll enjoy the ride. The movie was written and directed by actor-filmmaker-model-chef-author Joe Zaso when he was in high school. Given the lack of queer-powered SOV horror films from the 1980s, Zaso did humanity a solid when he uploaded the previously unknown Screambook to YouTube.
This movie works best when you envision it as part of a block of public access programming from beyond the solar system—one that also includes The Cramps Live at Napa State Mental Hospital and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Even during the most taxing sequences, Screambook is a euphoric thunderclap of surrealism that features handmade comic book panels, overuse of Tony’s “redrum” voice from The Shining, a shockingly great synth and piano score, and experimental video glitches that could only be produced today with the help of custom circuit bending machines from Etsy. This isn’t something you watch for hi-octane entertainment. It’s a voyage to other realms, where cooked spaghetti is a murder weapon and melted Play-Doh is a substitute for monsters.
I haven’t watched Screambook 2 yet. But I’ll bet you three bazillion dollars that I’ll enjoy it more than Creepshow 2.
