Creep

[7.0]

Directed by Patrick Brice

Blumhouse Productions

Rated R, 82 min.

It’s not surprising that the found footage genre has become commercially overexploited. In an era of constant surveillance and pocket-sized cameras, ordinarily people capturing the world around them has become an easily accessible, and in fact, engrained practice. In a way, lenses have become like additional eyes. So when shaky video functions as the “eyes” of characters in found footage horror films, our plugged-in minds project ourselves in their place; and when gnarly things appear onscreen, it’s as if our personal devices have become invaded, an honestly frightening (and since overused) idea.

Luckily, this year has been fortunate to host two horror comedies that have found still-fresh elements of the genre to explore – What We Do in the Shadows and Creep. Yet Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s hilarious vampire mockumentary couldn’t be more different than the latter, which gets its kicks out of examining a videographer-subject relationship in a situation prompted by a Craiglist ad. Imagine The Cable Guy as a horror story, with Matthew Broderick filming the whole thing from his perspective. That’s sort of the deal here, as executed in the internet age.

Patrick Brice (The Overnight), also Creep’s director and co-story developer, along with Mark Duplass, plays a videographer who responds to some guy’s ambiguous online ad for a day’s worth of work. Duplass plays said individual, Josef, and things get weird from the onset. For anyone who has ever found themselves browsing the internet in search of freelance gigs, you’ve probably come across quite a few weird ones, and maybe even accepted one or two shady positions. This was a true struggle even before the days of Craiglist, but Creep finds its distinctiveness in exploring a freelancer’s worst nightmare in a time when “catfishing” is a well-known term.

Duplass, playing Josef with straight-faced, uncomfortably bizarre friendliness, is successful in driving the audience to wonder at what ends his possible deception may lead. Brice, meanwhile, handles the increasing absurdity of his circumstances with a frightened, deadpan reluctance, only adding to the queasier scenes’ hilarity.

Creep is successful at implementing “down the rabbit hole”-type storytelling into a familiar genre, while somehow blending its look at social discomfort with the suspense tropes of similar films. But what’s particularly interesting is Brice’s use of typical “found footage” camera acknowledgment to study the relationship between videographer and subject; the person operating the camera is reflective of what direction the story is taking. This concept has obviously been executed before, but finds newfound effectiveness in this two-character film, being that Josef uses point-of-view as a manipulative tool. With this approach, Creep essentially becomes a darkly comic character study.

I couldn’t quite get behind some overused “gotcha” scares, sometimes played for laughs, and a final 20 minutes that doesn’t quite match the intrigue of the film’s initial pull. But Creep certainly amounts to an indie thriller that is consistently humorous and unnerving, with a stand-out, bonkers performance by Duplass. Your decision to view the film as “horror” will amount to how scary you find its satiric look at online employment to be, and not simply its nod to familiar genre elements.  Considering that similarly weird encounters have occurred in the “real” (digital) world, I’d say Creep is pretty effective.

If nothing else, it serves as an example of how found footage can still be used as a viable aesthetic choice to express a real idea, even a timely one, as opposed to serving as a trendy cash-in that takes pride in ignoring thoughtful shot composition. At least when dressed in shaky-cam’s familiar skin, Creep stays true to its inner psycho.

Now streaming on Netflix.