"CREEP" (2004)

Starring: Franka Potente
Written & Directed by Christopher Smith

Polly Staffle Rating: ****

When it comes to horror movies there are essentially two schools of thought. There’s what I will call the “lingerie approach” - the less you show the better - and there’s the “Larry Flynt approach” - the more exposed the merrier. Good horror films usually master one of these approaches. The British-made “Creep” masters both and that’s why it gets my vote for the best horror movie I’ve seen this year.

Written and directed by Christopher Smith and starring the always fantastic “on the run” German actress Franka Potente, “Creep” is an extremely scary film. It’s as if Smith heavily studied every decent horror film that has come out in the past several years and attempted to roll them into one 85-minute joy ride. The opener has the feel of the last five minutes of “The Blair Witch Project.” Several scenes are reminiscent of the underground tunnel ending of “House of 1,000 Corpses.” I was also reminded of “Jeepers Creepers” and “Wrong Turn.” There’s also a bit of “Underworld” and “Session 9.” It doesn’t mean Smith is intentionally copying any of these movies or has even seen any of them. It just means the guy knows what he’s doing. The really cool thing is “Creep” is his debut film.

Potente stars as Kate, a woman that is terrorized by someone or something after getting locked up overnight in a subway station. She has to make her way through the dark tracks of the London transportation system as well as sewer-filled tunnels in hopes of finding a way out. Kate stumbles across a few homeless people that live in the station and others that are also trapped underground and stalked by the Creep.

The first half of the movie is very suspenseful and it seems like a long time before we ever see who is doing the killing. When someone dies, we don’t really see what happens to them because it takes place either off screen or in the darkness. The outcome is extremely effective. Once the killer is revealed, the movie does a 360 turnaround and switches to a gore fest. There’s lots of blood and guts here. The film essentially blends the two horror movie approaches with results varying from creepy to disturbing.

There’s also a mysterious world in the underground dwellings that is much bigger than we see here with lots of questions left unanswered. Who is the Creep? Why is he there? Was he the result of a mad doctor’s experiments? How long has he been down there? What disturbed him and sent him on the prowl? What does he do with the people exactly? Why does he instantly kill some and not others? I like movies that get me to thinking and asking questions. You don’t have to fill all the blanks in for us. The killer doesn’t always have to have a clear cut motive for what he does, nor do his actions have to make sense.

The film also makes a few social comments on perspective. Early on, Kate’s character obliviously sends the wrong message to an admirer of the opposite sex. He sees her in a sexual way and she isn’t having it, so he attempts to force himself on her. Though the male character tries to rape her, later Kate is concerned for his well being and tries to get help when he is in need.

There is also a scene with the creep playing doctor. It’s a very bizarre scene with him pretending to scrub down for a procedure and placing the patient under an anesthesia. But his victim is wide awake and there is nothing sterile about the operation he performs.

In another scene, Kate convinces a man, who lives in the subway station, to take her to the security shack. He tells her that homeless people have gone missing in the tunnels. He then admits he is only trying to get a rise out of her and tells her “homeless people don’t go missing, they are missing.”

The film is also heavy with coincidences. Kate’s character is mistaken a few times as being one of the homeless. She is a party girl on her way to catch up with a friend to go see a celebrity. She is unlikable at first and stuck up, but because of her situation she has to interact and depend on people she ordinarily would be too good for. Later she meets up with a sewer maintenance worker that has the same first name as the celebrity.

For my money, Potente is one of the best actresses working. She should be a huge international star with the highest salary per movie. She’s been great as an action star in “Run Lola Run,” has shown she can do a romantic drama with “The Princess and the Warrior” and she is almost a prototype for the lead in a slasher. I’m always interested to see what she does next.

I would also like to see what yarn 35-year-old Smith spins in his second outing. I was impressed with both his screenplay and direction. One thing I really liked is how, his Creep is a hands-on kind of guy. In the end the villain gets what’s coming to him with our heroine being smart, not just stabbing or shooting him. The Creep is no super human that those things wouldn’t work like Freddy, Michael or Jason, it’s just Smith doesn’t go for the typical cheesy horror movie ending with several false death scenes, an overused twist or the door open for a sequel.

There are very few weapons and limited CGI effects in this film. Both are a breath of fresh because I for one am getting a bit tired of a lot of what the horror genre has been serving up lately. There’s the action-horror films being pumped out like “Doom,” most of which are based off video games. There’s the huge budget mainstream releases like “Constantine,” which I didn’t see and probably won’t. There are the horrible CGI-laden pieces of garbage like Wes Craven’s “Cursed.” There’s the unneeded remakes and sequels like “The Amityville Horror,” “Dominion: Prequel to the Exocist,”“Saw II” and “The Ring 2.” There’s the PG-13 movies like “Boogeyman” and “White Noise.” There’s the casting of non-actors that end up being annoying as hell and distracting like Paris Hilton in the otherwise good “House of Wax.” These elements are simply to get more people into theaters to see the films and because of it, the final products suffer. “Creep” is the anti of all of these things. I’ve read the film was of a fairly low budget, but I haven’t been able to find numbers since it didn’t get a U.S. theatrical release.

All and all, “Creep” is an excellent movie with plenty of suspense and blood and guts to go a long with it. This is a plain and simple no nonsense horror movie that serves up scares with what it doesn’t show you and disturbs with what it does.

- CCF, February 2006