Year released: 2014
THE CHARGE: He's a creep. He's a weirdo. What the hell is he doing here?
THE EVIDENCE: Josef is dying. He advertises on Craiglist for someone to film his last days, and to impart wisdom to a young son who will grow up without ever getting to know his father. Aaron answers the ad and it doesn't take long before he gets the sense that there's something... off about Josef. But hey, a job's a job, right? Even if it's the last job Aaron might ever take...
Creep is a curiosity. It's a found footage film with only two actors in it. The director, Patrick Brice, plays Aaron, which makes perfect sense. After all, in a found footage film, the guy holding the camera would ostensibly be the director, right? Here, he's the viewer's surrogate, the voice of reason questioning the actions of the increasingly bizarre Josef.
Mark Duplass, writer and director of a number of indie projects but probably best known as Pete in the TV series The League, plays Josef, the titular creep. He basically takes Jon Lovitz's Annoying Man character from Saturday Night Live and dials it back to just the right side of believable. At first, he just seems awkward, almost childlike and lacking in social graces, equal parts Norman Bates and Sheldon Cooper. But his mistakes and his mannerisms become more obvious - and more dangerous - as the movie goes on. It's a hell of a performance by Duplass, who plays Josef not as a weirdo who morphs into a psychopath, but as a psychopath gradually losing his flawed disguise of normalcy.
The face of a man who just saw every RB on his fantasy team get injured.
The film's limited cast and its lack of special effects both work in the movie's favor. They make the found footage aspect of the movie much more believable. There's very little that happens on the screen to force a viewer to suspend disbelief, aside from a couple of overly cinematic scene transitions.
But what really makes the movie shine is the way the tension gradually builds throughout. A mere minute after Aaron first turns his camera on to start the movie, it's obvious how the story will end. The fact that the ending still gave me a punch to the gut is a testament to how well the story builds to that moment. Over the film's short hour and fifteen minute running time, I got to know these characters well enough that I didn't want the movie to end the way it had to. But that sense of inevitability just magnified the dread when everything came to a head.
Still a better wolf than anything in the Twilight movies.
There's not a whole heck of a lot else I can say about Creep, other than "go watch it". The movie isn't as much about plot as it is about the performances. But even if slow burning psychological horror films aren't your thing, the movie's running time is short enough that it won't test your patience. And Duplass has created a character that will certainly go down as a memorable one in the genre. As the first film of a rumored trilogy, I'm anxious to see what direction the series will go from here.
I get the feeling that there's only one way it can all end... and I'm OK with that.
THE VERDICT: Creep is NOT GUILTY of anything except making me want to take a long shower after all was said and done. Take time with a wounded hand, indeed. (RIP Scott Weiland.)
