CREEP
****
Directed by Patrick Bryce.
Starring Mark Duplass, Patrick Bryce, Kate Aselton.
Horror, USA, 77 mins, Cert 15.
Released in the UK on Blu-ray via Second Sight Films on 9th December 2024.
Having recently released THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, YOU’RE NEXT, LAKE MUNGO and GREEN ROOM, Second Sight continue their run of releasing iconic modern horror movies in splendid special editions with 2014s CREEP, a movie that manages to find the terror in just being polite to someone who appears to be a little too friendly.
Said polite person is Aaron (director/co-writer Patrick Brice), a cash-strapped filmmaker who has answered an advert for somebody requiring a day’s filming. His employer is Josef (co-writer Mark Duplass), who invites Aaron to his remote mountain holiday home to make a document for Josef’s unborn child, as Josef says he has three months to live and would like something of him to remain for his baby.
All sounds perfectly innocent, but after some initial awkwardness when Josef wishes to be filmed having a bath – or ‘tubby time’, as he calls it – things start to get really weird as Josef begins to reveal more details about himself and makes excuses for Aaron not to leave. However, once Aaron begins to twig that things are really not okay and does leave, that is when things turn really dark.
Found footage is a style of movie making that, if done well, can be extremely effective in scaring its audience, even if the subject matter is fantastical. But, more often than not, it can also be a totally flat experience as you generally follow one or two characters about for an hour before the screen goes dark, there’s a scream and somebody gets dragged off into the black in an attempt to create ‘fear’ when all that has been created is tedium waiting for not very much to happen. This is addressed to some degree by Mark Duplass in the special features when he explains the genesis of CREEP, and you can tell that a lot of effort has gone into making something effectual and, for use of another word, creepy out of what essentially amounts to not a lot.
In the same way that the original UK THE OFFICE worked due to the slight nuances that the actors brought to their performances to create a believable comedy, CREEP works because both Aaron and Josef are totally relatable. The former because we’ve all accepted doing things with the best of intentions and then decided that maybe that wasn’t the smartest move. The latter because we’ve all met people like Josef, people who are very good at subtle manipulation and persuasiveness, playing on the fact that nice guys like Aaron don’t wish to be rude and say no. Whereas Patrick Brice is not on the screen for most of the running time, as he is the guy holding the camera, most of his performance is down to voice acting and reacting to Mark Duplass, who absolutely nails being overly-friendly, delivering his dialogue with so much conviction and with so many tiny facial quirks and gestures that you can clearly see how Aaron could not want to upset him or appear rude.
Treading a similar social awkwardness theme as the recent SPEAK NO EVIL, CREEP is a prime example of how effective a found footage movie can be, creating a realistic situation and putting the viewer in the place of the person holding the camera, in this case Aaron, who just wants to do the right thing and not be disrespectful. In his interview on the disc, Mark Duplass discusses the various endings he and Patrick Brice came up with, and although the ending is a little bit silly and breaks the tension that has been so meticulously set up over the previous hour or so in a slightly less-than-satisfactory way, it was probably the best choice, their reason for choosing it as sensible as the reasons for rejecting the alternatives. Nevertheless, CREEP is still a strange but rewarding experience, partly because we can all relate to it, but mostly because of creative and passionate filmmaking that achieves a lot without having to do anything flashy or contrived. And that is how you do found footage successfully.
Chris Ward
