Creep (2015) | Movie Review

$1,000 for the day. Filming service. Discretion is appreciated.

If ever you needed a film to remind you that Craigslist is no place for a job-search, “Creep” is that movie. When Aaron (Patrick Brice) first shows up to answer an ad for a personal videographer, he has little reason to suspect that Josef (Mark Duplass) would be anything more than eccentric. I mean, what’s weird about a guy soliciting a stranger with $1,000 to venture out to a cabin in a remote mountain town to document a day in his life? If you answered ‘Everything!’ – then you, my friend, understand the world of Craigslist.

At first, Josef presents himself as nothing more than quirky – an odd bird with too much money on his hands. He likes to spook his guest, but he always follows it up with a gloriously uncomfortable full-body hug. Josef is strange, but seemingly innocent. As it becomes more and more obvious that Aaron desperately wants to leave, Josef’s mental wall slowly comes crashing down.

Found footage is one of those film tropes that most reviewers, and many audiences, have become exhausted with over the last few years. What started as a glorious movement into a uniquely original camera-style, has devolved into the same-old ‘let’s take this camera with me everywhere I go for no discernible reason other than to not have to pay a cameraman for this shoot’. This is where “Creep” gains a bit of an advantage. Instead of teens running around, aimlessly pointing cameras when they should be running like hell, here we have the character of Aaron who actually needs the camera to keep rolling to get paid, and as the film spirals on, the camera itself becomes a narrator telling the story.

Everywhere that “Creep” succeeds lies firmly at the feet of Mark Duplass. Josef is a character so engaging that Duplass makes it an absolute chore to believe he is capable of anything more than a few mischievous pranks. One minute he is a loveable guy with a few too many quirks, and the next, Duplass skillfully creates an uneasiness that even the audience can feel. It really is the kind of performance woefully lacking in found footage films – with Josef, we have an actual ‘character’.

Patrick Brice is less successful as most of his role demands he function as the window for the audience, therefore he is little more than a perfunctory tool in the portrayal of Josef and his increasing awkwardness. Performing a dual role as director of “Creep”, Brice relies a bit too heavily on ‘jump scares’ when this film plays much better focused on Duplass’ eerie presentation. That is not to say the film does not have scattered moments of genuine jolt (the conclusion is a true test of blood-pressure medication resistance), it simply has a few too many scenes stuffed with clichés when the general mood would have served the film much stronger.

Overall, the film suffers from found footage overload, offering little new and a few too many easy scares, but Duplass and his effortless performance slaps the film on his shoulders and drags it across the ‘Entertainment’ finish line. If you are looking for a fresh horror film, you could do a lot worse than this “Creep”.

*This film was original reviewed as part of the 2014 SXSW Film Festival

Starring Mark Duplass, Patrick Brice
Written by Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass
Directed by Patrick Brice

 

Aaron Peterson
The Hollywood Outsider