Creep

This found footage film follows videographer Aaron as he answers an ad to film a guy called Josef for the day. $1000. No questions asked. As Aaron spends more and more time with Josef, it becomes fairly obvious that Josef is not who he says he is, and as Josef begins to act more and more bizarre, Aaron starts to fear for his own safety.

For a low budget horror film this ticks a lot of boxes. We've all met people like this, and the way Josef is playful yet also sinister generates this uneasy vibe throughout the whole film. We are screaming for Aaron to just run and get away, and when he finally does the film descends into a pure paranoia fest. The ending was oddly interesting yet somehow unsatifying, but overall this is a great little horror that tries something new and mostly pulls it off. Give it a go.

Videographer Aaron is hired by a middle aged client called Josef in a mountain cabin, just for a single day shoot, but soon ends up regretting it. Josef displays some very unsettling behaviour which includes playing scary pranks, wearing a wolf mask, hiding Aaron's car keys and a constant need for buddy hugging, but these are harmless compared to the dark secret that he has. Not counting a phone call this rather short movie has a cast of just two but the characters bounce off each other well and form a compelling story line. Found footage has been done to death by 2014 but thankfully Creep does offer an alternative to the countless paranormal and zombie entries, though would a person be filming themselves performing such mundane tasks as opening the mail, putting an extra lock on their door, making a phone call, I think not. A lot of the running time is filmed in the great outdoors and these scenic shots are pretty good. If you are looking for multiple kills and gore go elsewhere, Creep is a chilling psychological thriller which culminates in a great ending. Well worth checking out, better than its sequel in my opinion. Part produced by Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions.

Employing found footage in a way that actually makes sense in the context of the plot, Creep is the story of an increasingly awkward relationship between two men that feels frighteningly plausible.

The film rests upon – and succeeds because of – Mark Duplass' excellent performance as the type of person we've all met at one time or another; someone a little bit too keen to be your friend, inspiring conflicting feelings of suspicion as to their motives and empathy with regard to their ill-judged attempts at social interaction. Seen through the eyes (or rather camera) of Aaron, the only other on-screen character (played by writer/director Patrick Brice), it's clear fairly early on that something isn't quite right, but should he be worried?

Despite an occasional reliance on cynical jump scares (presumably included to ensure that the tension doesn't sag – the film is dialogue-heavy) the suspense ebbs and flows nicely and keeps you guessing as to where it will end up going. Thankfully, for a film that always feels like it's building up to something, the resolution is well-judged and perfectly executed.

Overall this is a very impressive effort and marks Patrick Brice out as a filmmaker to keep an eye on.

The found footage horror genre feels like a train that should have left the station a long time ago but sticks around waiting to see who else they can cram on board so they can squeeze a couple more bucks out of. Well, I'm glad that train stuck around to let "Creep" in, proving the genre isn't quite out of steam yet.

It's not so much the found footage aspect that makes "Creep" successful but the creative infusion of the mumblecore genre that breathes some life and/or scary death into the film. "Creep" is a two-hander that is co-written and co-acted by Patrick Brice (who also serves as director) and mumblecore king Mark Duplass. Brice and Duplass are able to funnel the mumblecore's priority of character development and use of a more natural dialogue, or in this case, a very naturally unnerving dialogue, into the staples of a Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity) produced horror film. The combination of these three's efforts make for one, well, creepy film.

Brice plays Aaron, a normal guy looking to make a little extra cash when he answers a craigslist ad that will pay him $1,000 for a days work to videotape a day in the life of Josef, played by Duplass. The shoot has Aaron driving to Josef's family cabin at a remote mountain town where instantly both we the audience and Aaron feel things aren't right. Josef greets Aaron with a loud sneaky surprise hello, and then, foregoing a handshake, straight to a stranger hug. That last sentence pretty much captures the film experience as you go back and forth from shocking jump scares and very unsettling interactions between the vulnerable Aaron and the assertively goofy Josef.

Kudos to Mark Duplass for creating a character that is thoroughly terrifying but relatable enough and more importantly sympathetic enough to believably keep Aaron in a situation that just gets weirder and dangerously weirder. Scenes that include a naked bathing Josef giving a mimed bath to his unborn son, which he calls "tubby time", will long stay in my memory banks under the title 'frightening'. "Creep" excels by shifting gears from hilarious, to sad, to scary, to sometimes all of that at the same time. And to each their own, in the SXSW Q & A after the screening Duplass said it was great to watch as some of the audience would laugh at one part but others in the audience would wince in terror.

While Duplass and Brice heaped praises on horror guru Blum, saying they helped them achieve effectiveness in a genre they've never attempted, I still had my qualms. The jump scares become all too repetitive hitting a mathematical equation that Duplass said Blum taught them. "One jump scare every 10 minutes to keep them in the mood." Another one of my horror pet peeves is when the holder of the hand held camera in a found footage film only see's what the lense sees. So when in an open room and the camera moves left so does the character's vision which results to something surprising them by jumping out to us on screen when all that character has to do is move their own head back and forth to keep informed on what's around them (thanks for letting me rant).

The end which I won't get into has a few moments of 'you should have called the cops so much sooner', but that can't take away from intense ominous vibe that permeates. I dug "Creep", it's a film that is greatly helped by a very good actor who taps into his inner creep and gets under your skin.

"This" gets under your skin.

1 Timothy 4:1

I didn't really know what to expect with this film as I hadn't read many reviews, but gave it a go. It's starts off innocently enough, and the plot is easy to follow. Then we meet Josef, who right away seems a little off-kilter, but I couldn't put my finger on why until later. As the plot moves on, I felt like I'd ventured into the dark side of YouTube, when you're looking for something normal and you end up stumbling upon all kinds of crazy stuff.

The tension was very well paced and really effective, I found myself shrinking further and further down the settee. The ending was also very surprising, I was kind of expecting it but at the same time not really? If that makes sense! A good watch.