Based on a short story by H. P. Lovecraft.
In 1909 Will Thurber (Ben Barnes), a young art student in Miskatonic University meets a new student, Richard Pickman (Crispin Glover), whose macabre subject matters catch his curiosity. He manages to win over Pickman's friendship and Pickman invites him to see his "stronger" paintings. He shows a painting of his great-grandmother's great-grandmother who was burned as a witch, feasting with her coven on the corpse of her husband. Shocked and terrified by the painting, Will escapes the dormitory, only to see a man in a carriage sucking the breasts of a horribly diseased prostitute. The carriage goes dark and a hand beckons will to approach. As he does, an apparition of the witch from the painting appears, striking Will with her fingernails, causing him to startle awake from this nightmare. Badly late, he attends his fiancée's garden party, only to recognise her father as the man in the carriage and begins to once more hallucinate about the witch from the painting. Realizing that Pickman's work caused his visions he rushes back to the dormitory, only to find Pickman and all his paintings gone.
Years later in 1926, and Thurber is a wealthy gallery owner and happily married with a son, but one day a painting is delivered to his home. The next night he dreams of witnessing the witches' feast in person, and upon wakening realizes that the painting is one of Pickman's works. His son also catches a glimpse of the painting and begins to suffer from nightmares. Later, his colleague and friend from the university, Joe Minot introduces Pickman once more to the artists' circle, and this time Pickman's art gets praised as revolutionary. The same night Pickman shows up at Thurber's home and charms his wife with his artistic talk, while unnerving Will. At the end of the night Pickman invites him once more to see his latest paintings. Suffering once more of nightmares along with his son, Will rushes to confront Pickman and demands that he stays away from him and his family. Pickman promises to do so, and offers to withdraw his gallery exhibition if Will would only come and see his paintings, and Will reluctantly agrees.
Pickman takes him to his rundown house that Will recognises from his nightmares and brings him to the basement where Pickman first speaks to an unknown party behind a closed door, telling them to stay back. Will enters, and upon finding more terrifying paintings he picks a can of turpentine and begins to splatter it all over the artworks. Pickman returns and Will confronts him about the effect of the paintings, that they drive the people who look at them slowly insane. Pickman tries to explain himself, gesticulating dramatically, causing Will to pull out a gun and shoot Pickman as he raises a crowbar to open yet another boxed artwork. Dying, Pickman tells Will that his art doesn't come from his imagination, but from life experience, and that they are his "family portraits". As he passes out, Will sets the paintings on fire. But then a hideous monster straight out of Pickman's paintings climbs out of a well in the basement floor and howls in rage as it sees the fire and Pickman laying lifeless on the floor. It drags his body down into the well, prompting Will to finally escape the burning building.
Later Will takes his family to attend his latest gallery exhibition, only to see Pickman's paintings on the wall, set there by Joe who has gone completely insane and mutilated his face after looking at them for too long. Will hastily sends his wife and son home and tells his assistant to burn them all. Upon returning home he finds his wife cooking dinner and promises her that things will get better from now on. But his wife turns around, revealing that she's gouged out her own eyes and calmly tells him, quoting Pickman, that she now knows where the fear lives. And as Will looks into the oven, he realizes that his wife has killed their son and made the food out of his bodyparts.
Tropes
- Adaptational Abomination: In the original story Pickman is at best a strange, talented man, and at worst a strange, talented ghoul (which are pretty low-scale horrors in the Cthulhu Mythos), and his paintings inspire at most disgust and fear, not wide-spread cannibalistic insanity.
- Adaptation Expansion: The events of the original short story comprise only one scene of the episode near the end.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the original story, Pickman is a controversial figure, and only Thurber stays by him while other artists drop him. While Thurber fears Pickman after what he finds in his studio, he still talks about him with some respect and admiration. The adaptation completely flips it on its head - here, Will finds Pickman repulsive, which everyone else considers strange and rude of him.
- Affably Evil: Pickman, post time-skip, is quite gregarious and likeable. As his relationship with Will becomes more fraught, he seems genuinely confused as to why Will is so wary around him, maybe even a little hurt; later, when getting ready to reveal the truth, he can be heard warning his "model" that Will is a friend and not to be hurt.
- Ambiguously Human: Pickman doesn't seem to have aged to any noticeable degree during the sixteen-year time skip and is capable of creating works of art that have all kinds of anomalous effects, but other than that, he seems almost completely human - seemingly dying from a gunshot wound like a mere mortal. He calls his monster paintings "family portraits" and talks once about how he could hear his family feasting underground, though whether he's being literal or metaphorical is open to interpretation; notably, the monster serving as his model seems outraged to see him dead and rescues his body from the flames. In the original short story he is indeed descended from the ghouls.
- Body Horror: The paintings cause insanity in those who look at them for too long. At the end of the episode, Will's wife gouges out her own eyes and murders their son after falling victim to the paintings, dismembering the child's corpse to make a feast out of it. Will later finds his son's roasted head in the oven.
- Brown Note: Pickman's paintings cause delirium, nightmares and hallucinations to people who look at them for too long. Witnessing an entire gallery of his "strongest" works at once causes self-mutilation and cannibalistic urges. It probably has something to do with the eldritch sigils used in some of the paintings (which Will's wife later carves on her own forehead), rather than necessarily the disturbing content.
- Cthulhu Mythos: The setting of Arkham and Miskatonic University confirm that the adaptation is set in the same world as the original short story. Furthermore, the whispering voices that the people hallucinating from Pickman's art hear speak the name of Yog-Sothoth. Furthermore, the witch in Pickman's painting has the tree version of the Elder Sign carved on her forehead, and in the end Will's wife has done it to herself, as well.
- Death by Adaptation: Pickman. While in the original story his meeting with Thurber ended with both men going their separate ways (albeit with Thurber scared out of his wits), here Thurber shoots Pickman dead.
- The Edwardian Era: The episode begins in Arkham in 1909, and briefly follows Will's time as an art student at Miskatonic University.
- Mad Artist: Pickman's largely rational in daily life, but he is truly obsessed about his art and the necessity of showing it to the masses. It's unclear whether he understands the effect it has on other people, or if "enlightening" them to see the world like he does is the whole point. He does have some very misanthropic and nihilistic views on how humanity is ignorant and should disregard common morality (which he shares with Will when they first during college).
- Named by the Adaptation: Thurber is given the first name William, and Pickman's witch ancestor is named Lavinia.
- The Roaring '20s: After a short time following Will as an art student in 1909, the episode jumps forward several years to 1926, where Will is now a successful artist and gallery owner.
- Wicked Witch: Pickman's great-grandmother's great-grandmother was a cannibalistic witch who was eventually burned at the stake.
