Creep (2014)

Directed By: Patrick Brice

Viewed on Netflix

 

Summary: A freelance filmographer takes a suspiciously well paying job filming a man in a small town near a forest. Things go about as well as you’d expect.

 

Here we are back with a movie from a subgenre of horror that I have a fierce love/hate relationship with, found footage movies. There are a few really spectacular found footage movies, but I try to keep the number of found footage movies reviewed for this site low because most of the bad ones aren’t all that interesting to talk about. They tend to have the same problems so I tend to only bring up these kinds of movies when they do something a bit out of the ordinary. Which brings us to today’s film, Creep! Creep is a movie I kind of stumbled upon, I had never really heard of it, I just noticed it on Netflix one day and decided to watch it. And I’m glad I did because this is one of the rarest of the rare, a found footage movie that is *gasp* good!

Before I get too far into the plot I want to say right upfront that I won’t be getting into spoiler territory until the very end of the review. Now that that is out of the way, Creep begins with a freelance videographer driving up to a house in a small town in order to take a lucrative one day job from a person he met on Craigslist. Aaron, the videographer, is a bit apprehensive about this, but he needs the money so he continues on to the small mountain home that the meeting is supposed to take place at. After arriving Aaron meets Josef, an odd fellow who takes an immediate liking to him, and the two begin discussing what Aaron will be filming.  During this process Josef reveals that he is very ill and that he wants Aaron to capture sequences that he wishes to share with his unborn son that he fears he will not be able to do in real life. Aaron is a bit put off by this eccentric man, but agrees to film him, setting the stage for a day he will never forget.

 

So this is one of those plots that could go two ways, either heartwarming or horrifying, and judging by its inclusion in this series you can probably guess which one. But let’s get one thing out of the way immediately. With a lot of these found footage movies there are questions about why is someone filming this and who is editing and so on. This is one of the rare found footage movies where I have absolutely no problem at all with the fact that someone is always filming, it feels very appropriate and natural and the filming informs both of the main characters in different ways. In that same vein the atmosphere here is just perfect. It completely matches the title, in fact, with the mood of the vast majority of the movie being this sense of looming wrongness that just hangs over everything.  

 

But why is this so tense? Where does that feeling come from? It all boils down to one thing that this movie has a firm grasp on, and that is the dangers of social pressure. Aaron is never particularly comfortable or relaxed during his time with Josef, but he stays with him to film, and the reason he does that is pretty simple. Aaron is feeling what many people feel on a day to day basis, the trap of social pressures and expectations. Josef’s sad story, his offers of money and his sharing of intimate details about his life are all executed in such a way that Aaron is effectively trapped by him in a scenario where, sure, Aaron could physically remove himself from the situation, but the invisible pressure that he feels forces him to stay. Even as things escalate, the hooks are still in, and because of this, Aaron isn’t reacting with the same care or suspicion that an average person would if they were just dropped into this late stage situation. This sort of thing happens in many films, but I’ve never seen it done as clearly as it is done here.

 

To pull that off you need an understanding of how people relate to each other but you also need actors who can match the down to earth premise of the horror with realistic performances, and in that regard Creep succeeds quite well. Both of the leads bring natural performances to the table, with Aaron’s being a bit more understated while Josef’s balances that out by being a bit more extroverted and out there. It is a good, sensible dynamic that fits the character’s personalities well and helps to drive home the tension that is the core of the story. Duplass plays Josef as a bit of an odd person, someone you wouldn’t necessarily think is totally normal if you met them, but not ridiculously over the top. He’s weird but a lot of the reasons for why he is not completely normal are well established. Josef’s upfront discussion with Aaron about his illness and how it is affecting him mentally do a lot to explain why he is the way he is and why Aaron is so willing to make exceptions for Josef’s odd personality.

 

I especially like the setting of Creep, it mostly takes place in either the woods or a house and these vacant locations highlight the oppressive atmosphere that is established early on. Not seeing other people in the film works beautifully well with the setting to heighten the sense of isolation and loneliness that is already present and to drive home even further the difficulty of removing yourself from a dangerous social situation and the feeling of helplessness that accompanies that. These things are all made more impressive when it is noted that the two stars of the movie, Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice, also wrote and produced it, with Brice directing it. It highlights how a found footage style movie seems to thrive when there is a lack of resources which forces the creators behind it to either create some cookie cutter ghost story with a lot of camera shaking, or step back, look at what they can do and create something memorable and unique with what they have. I’m glad Creep is one of the latter, and that’s all I can really say without getting into spoilers. Definitely Recommend.

 

SPOILERS

 

So things don’t go very well for Aaron. This may not be the spoileriest spoiler, but Josef isn’t quite what he appears to be. It is revealed that he has been lying about many, many things and he just gets stranger and stranger throughout the movie. Duplass completely nails it as this emotionally manipulative compulsive liar whose real motives aren’t revealed until the very end of the film. His fixation with Aaron grows and with that growth the final piece of this treatise on social horror is completed. Aaron attempts to go to the police but because he doesn’t know anything personal about Josef, and he hasn’t physically threatened Aaron, they say there is nothing they can do. Aaron is alone. Aaron’s paranoia grows steadily and it is just palpable through the TV screen while Josef’s disturbing messages and deliveries to Aaron continue to arrive. It is a really wonderful build up and the downer ending is completely earned.