Creep

This 2004 British horror movie has received pretty much no attention whatsoever, at all, from anyone. I had not heard of it at all until the DVD came into the store a few weeks ago. The cover is a pretty generic horror movie image, a subway car at night with a red hand pressed against the window. Nothing about it jumped out at me, and I had not (and still haven't) heard anything about the movie from any movie website or fellow cineaste.

But it is, after all, a horror film. And it does star Franka Potente, known to fans of foreign horror films as the star of the German mega-hit Anatomie and to fans of red-headed trotting girls as the star of Run Lola Run.

Last night, I finally got around to checking out Creep, and was surprised to discover that it isn't half-bad. An entirely competant throwback to the simple, exploitation horror films of the 70's, Christopher Smith's Creep does nothing more or less than tell a very old-fashioned horror story well.



Checking out the first bit of Andrzej Bartkowiak's video game adaptation Doom recently (I didn't write a review because I turned it off after a half hour), I was surprised not by how dumb or pointless the movie was, but by its sheer tedium. You would expect a movie based on a game where all you do is wander around and shoot at demons to be simplistic and predictable, but you'd at least expect it to have a certain amount of action, an unsettling atmosphere, some degree of visceral impact. Doom consists almost entirely of people standing around dark hallways in silly suits looking for invisible stuff. I don't ever need to see The Rock turn around a corner while shining a flashlight again, thanks all the same.

Creep doesn't make that mistake. A film with a small cast set almost entirely in the London Underground, it manages to subvert your expectations more than once. Even different sections of the subway system and sewers seem to take on increasingly nefarious personalities, as the hero descends ever-deeper into the dank, forgotten recesses of the city's infrastructure.

Self-absorbed model Kate (Frank Potente) isn't much of a hero at all, really, at least at the film's opening. Callous towards the needy, pissy towards her friends, and convinced that she should be dating George Clooney, Kate's not really the sort of person you'd be likely to sympathize with under normal circumstances.

But the fate that awaits her when she misses the last train, you woulnd't wish on anyone, no matter how bitchy they may be. Kate awakens to discover that she has become locked in the Tube overnight. In a nice little bit of misdirection, writer/director Smith has us believe that it's all a scheme by her perverted co-worker (Jeremy Scheffield), luring her into the abandoned station for a bit of the ol' in-out.

Once Jeremy is disemboweled by a strange, unseen and terrifically powerful foe, however, it becomes clear to Kate and the viewer that something far more disturbing is afoot. The rest of the film finds Kate evading a nasty little specimen known as Craig (Sean Harris), a bloodthirsty monster of sorts whose background never becomes entirely clear. Like Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (the remake of which opens this week), Creep prefers to keep the actual details of the villain's origin secret, perhaps for inclusion in a sequel?

Anyway, we piece together that Craig is the product of either some sort of gruesome medical experimentation or some back alley abortion gone horribly wrong. His body is disfigured and warped. He occasionally emits a weird, banshee-like screech. He's obsessed with unneccessary surgery and mutilation. As Radiohead once said, What the hell is he doing here? He doesn't belong here.

To his credit, Smith handles the violence exceptionally well. Creep features enough on-screen blood-letting to satisfy gore fans, but also remembers that sometimes a substantially moist, crunchy sound effect or well-timed cut-away provides more impact than 20 shots of fake intestines. One intense sequence, probably the best in the film as well as the most disturbing, finds Craig preparing to vivisect a homeless junkie (Kelly Scott), and features very little actual on-screen violence.

Unfortunately, as these films tend to do, Creep feels kind of anti-climactic. It's at its best when first revealing the gruesome Craig and his homicidal ways. Once he's captured Kate in his underwater cage, and she joins forces with a trapped city employee (Vas Blackwood), the movie kind of goes on auto-pilot, falling back on genre conventions on its way to a predictable conclusion. And though Smith's direction is capable, he's not really bringing anything new to the horror film. Everything from the decor (which definitely resembles Mimic and Kontrol) to the lighting to Craig himself feels familiar, like a remix of older films rather than a reinvention or reconsideration.

Also, he makes a classic rookie mistake. Early on in the film, Kate expresses concern about being electrocuted by the subway tracks. We then get a long speech about how you should avoid all of the rails, but particularly the one in the middle. And then...nothing. You can't introduce the concept of someone being electrocuted by a third rail, and then never actually have it happen. Screenwriting 101, dude.