| Director(s) | Patrick Brice |
| Principal Cast | Mark Duplass as Josef Patrick Brice as Aaron |
| Release Date | 2014 |
| Language(s) | English |
| Running Time | 77 minutes |
From it’s handheld feel and picture quality to its mumblecore dialogue, I wouldn’t blame someone for confusing this Netflix found-footage horror flick for one of the streaming services more eccentric documentaries in the vein of Tiger King. The film opens on Aaron, a videographer struggling financially, who’s accepted a project to film a client project whose details are only to be revealed upon meeting. He drives up to the address the client had sent to him previously and knocks on the door, eager to get to the assignment. He gets no response. Red Flag #1.
He waits outside the house, hoping that the entire situation is just one big misunderstanding. As he looks around he sees an axe in the tree stump. Red Flag #2. As he’s just about to call it quits Aaron, the enigmatic client, pops out of nowhere giving both Josef and the audience a jump scare – a sign of things to come. His gregariousness and enthusiasm for the project alleviates both Josef and our own worries. As he brings Josef into his house, he explains that he’s suffering from a terminal illness and wants to record a day in his life for his unborn child- a memento to give his child a way to see him as the “man he was”. A strange request, but one that tugs at our heartstrings and distracts us from the warnings that came before. Aaron agrees to the project and the duo sets off to record the everyday life of Josef.
Given the morbid nature of the assignment- chronicling an dying man’s natural activities for his unborn child- early recordings of Josef feel darkly comedic. Him roleplaying activities he wants to do with his child with nothing but his imagination might seem endearing , but it comes off as nothing more than comical and a bit unsettling. As the day continues, Josef continues to act increasingly unhinged. He goes from asking strange invasive questions under the guise of establishing a kind of rapport with Aaron to revealing an host of unsettling behaviors and truths about himself. However, each of these aberrant actions is justified with some emotional plea for Aaron to stay and continue filming the project and maintain a friendship with Josef. Despite every instinct both he and the audience share about getting out of the situation, Aaron consistently acquiesces to the erratic happenings. For example, Josef reveals early on that he had taken pictures of Aaron as he had driven up to the house. When asked why, he reveals that he was scared and he thought if he got to know Aaron before Aaron had gotten to know Josef then he would be less scared. This twisted attempt by each character to understand the other first is the heart of the movie.
The audience is constantly left to question what exactly Josef’s game is and why Aaron refuses to ever leave the situation despite the constant red flags. The former is obviously scheming towards something, but the spontaneity of his actions make that something impossible to gauge. You know he’s going to do the unexpected, but precisely because it’s the unexpected each of these moments manages to shock and surprise. On the other hand, Aaron constantly gives his client the benefit of the doubt, extending a kindness that seems almost foolhardy given how little background information he has on him. As a result, the movie is best viewed as a character study, of two separate kinds of alienated individuals coming into a comedically nefarious entanglement. The question becomes why are each of them doing what they’re doing? Why is Josef inconsistent with his stories? Why does Aaron keep forgiving him? Getting to the bottom of these questions is what keeps you intrigued in the ever evolving game of cat-and-mouse.
For the most part, the experiment works. The movie does a good job establishing the practical reasons Aaron is involved with the project- his desperate need for money. Every strange action Josef engages in is immediately explained away in a harmless, albeit strange sort of justification. The extemporaneous and impromptu dialogue between the two makes every interaction feel natural. Both Duplass and Brice play incredibly well off one another, with the former channeling all the weirdest energy he can find and the latter mustering as much patience as possible for the antics he experiences. You know that the actors are delivering, when one of the best scenes takes place in complete darkness with Duplass narrating some genuinely disturbing events with such candor that it’s hard not to tremble in fear, even if for just a moment. Needless to say , all these over-the-top eccentricities become grounded in the story as opposed to feeling hackneyed which keeps a certain suspension of disbelief.
Unfortunately, the movie becomes a lot weaker once the story tapers off and focuses on just Aaron thinking about the situation by himself. The movie’s magic comes from the character’s interactions with one another, so the isolation of one of the two characters in the story removes the dynamic that makes everything up till that point cohesive and tense. This problem might have been resolved if the story delved deeper into Aaron’s psyche during these points, but even these moments do more at characterizing the enigma that Josef is than doing anything for Aaron. Josef doesn’t even need to be in the room to steal the screen. Given the ending of the movie, maybe that’s the point. Maybe we were never supposed to get either of the characters and were meant to just go along with certain statements of facts regarding them. The idea that it’s impossible to really understand them has a certain kind of charm in end of itself, even if it’s the one I wanted.
Speaking of charm, the structure of the movie invites a lot of interesting questions. How are certain events/moments recorded? Why are certain scenes put together in the way they are? Are the eccentricities of the movie staged or are they just detours on the path to the final conclusion? Each of these questions is answered and put together in a succinct and neat explanation at the end of the movie. I was someone who was going to write the film off as just a neat and effective flick, but the culmination of all the absurdities pays off in a way that ties together all the loose ends, even if its not the way I wanted or expected. If anything this is proof that a smart idea and tight execution is all that’s necessary to induce some chills.
REPORT CARD
| TLDR | Creep is found-footage done right. It focuses on its characters and their respective interactions to develop an engrossing tale that’ll have you asking just what each character is playing at in what seems to be an increasingly demented game of cat-and-mouse. If nothing else, it’ll leave you with even more of a reluctance to answer any shoddy looking Craigslist advertisements for ad-hoc work. |
| Rating | 8.7/10 |
| Grade | B+ |
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