The International Writers Magazine: Film Review

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CREEP • Alex Hillman Directed and written by Christopher Smith Creep tells the story of a young woman trapped in a London Underground station caught between going from one party to another in central London. After a while it becomes clear she is not alone, as she encounters the exploits of a murderous freak who enjoys torturing people before killing them, including many people that she has met along the way.

Creep is a unique horror in that it is both highly original and hopelessly clichéd at the same time. Its plot holds within it genuine promise - a number of people trapped on an Underground station with some hideously deformed monster who likes operating for fun. Indeed, the first half hour of the film (the opening scene, the build-up of tension, the unsettling references to rape) all work well. Plus, it's a British horror film (a nice rarity) - even if the main star is German.

But whilst it is an effective chiller in many ways, Creep ultimately is let down by its own tendency to pander to typical horror conventions. In places, it's refreshingly original, but, to an equal degree it's often on a parr with the worst kind of cheesy 80's horror - the type where the cast is populated by women with overly large breasts and always have arrogant boyfriends who get killed off first. In one particularly ridiculous scene, our heroine has the monster at the brink of death, and then decides to spare him as he starts to emit some gurgled pitiful apologies (only to find of course that he was tricking her all along and didn't in fact possess a conscience - something I would have thought was already quite evident, considering all the gleeful killing he had just enjoyed).

One major failing of the film is its tendency to ignore some of the most basic of horror movie rules. For example, you never ever show what the killer looks like until very near the end, otherwise the murderer's essence - the wonderful, mysterious quality that every great killer possesses - is entirely destroyed, from the onset. In Creep the killer is revealed within the first half of the film, and he's not even that scary anyway. To make it worse, the actor has endowed his character with a sort of 'trademark noise' of sorts - every time he is about to do something horrific he makes a noise that sounds like a seagull mating, possibly with a much bigger, heavier animal. It's just not scary.

Another problem with the film is that the killer is never given a background or a motivation for his killings. A brief foray into his past consists of a picture of him as a small boy standing with his father, but nothing more. Even taking into account I'd had a bit to drink, I was never aware of the relevance of this simple picture to any of the killer's activities during the film. It just didn't make any sense. There are also some issues with homeless people that are dealt with in a highly questionable fashion, which I have a few problems with.

However, if you're looking for a good night out and a bit of a scare then Creep delivers. It's by no means a good film, or even a good horror, but it's entertaining in its own way, and is a good film to watch with your friends. I give Creep 5.5/10

© Alex Hillman
February 2005.

Alex is a second year Creative Arts Student at Portsmouth University

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