FILM REVIEW: "Creep"

CREEP (2004)

**

Directed and written by Christopher Smith

Starring

Franka Potente ("Kate")
Vas Blackwood ("George")
Sean Harris ("Craig")

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

Kate, a young European socialite, falls asleep in the station while waiting for her London Underground subway train to arrive. She wakes up only to discover that the place has shut down and there isn’t anyone around. She searches for signs of life and finds a few other people... including a serial killer who’s out to make her his latest victim.

WHAT WORKS

The cinematography, for one. The film traverses the Underground from its gleaming, polished-chrome stairways and escalators to its grimy and darkly-lit tunnels. The sense of eeriness and claustrophobia that the film conjures up during the main character’s first moments of searching and growing panic is genuinely disturbing, as it plays upon a nightmare that all of us have had during our lives: the fear of being utterly and completely alone, in a place that should be familiar and non-threatening but is suddenly very alien and menacing. In its beginning moments, Creep manages to evoke this fear very, very well.

Creep also scores some brownie points with me for making the villain a monstrous but also pitiful creature in attempting to add some layers of character development and pitiable humanity. The exact details of crimes he commits add an even more disturbing element to the picture. I’d liked to have seen some more character development, but this is a step in the right direction.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK

Firstly, it is highly doubtful that the main character would be left to fall asleep, alone, like she did. I realize that it’s necessary for the film as it is to work, but it is illogical.

Secondly, there are several VERY dumb moments in the film, such as a complete failure of the main protagonists to kill the villain and make sure he’s dead when they have him wounded and/or subdued, and the complete failure of Kate to rescue one of her friends when it’s abundantly clear that she could have done so. Granted, many horror films have lapses in logic and common sense like this, but just because cliches and dumb thinking happen to be staples of the genre doesn’t mean that they’re good. It just means that it’s lazy writing; a classic case of the writer putting the story and his brain on autopilot and letting the cliches take over. Which is a shame, really, since Creep’s compelling early sense of atmosphere, coupled with its good cinematography, made me think that this would be a good horror/thriller in the vein of 28 Days Later or The Descent. But sadly, it’s not. It has a screaming girl, some expendable cast members (all of whom are more sympathetic and multi-dimensional than its main character), a villain who could’ve been interesting, and that’s it. When it comes to storyline or internal logic, it relies too much on easy answers and cliches. Creep’s raw potential is such that it could’ve been a good film, in better hands. As it is, it’s just that: lost potential.

THE FINAL WORD

If you simply must watch every film in which a deformed antagonist stalks a beautiful woman, then please, by all means, watch Creep. But if you want the best in British horror, then rent 28 Days Later, Alien, or The Descent, and pass up Creep’s bumpy ride into the long night.

"Creep" on IMDB.

"Creep" official trailer on Youtube.