Footage you should definitely find

As best I can tell, Mark Duplass might be somewhat of an outlier. He pops up in the strangest places doing all sorts of different things. I loved him in the long running raunchy FX series "The League" about the comings and goings of a friendly fantasy football fraternity. But he also popped up in the aforementioned Backrooms of this year. He's got comedic chops for sure. He's done drama and dabbled in darker projects outside of Creep with the likes of Safety Not Guaranteed which presented a more comedic side of his unconventional nature and The One I Love which had some very suspenseful elements of a romantic thriller of sorts. So when Ron picked this film for me, I didn't groan at all. I do struggle with the order of things. I added the twist this year because it's the fourth year I've been doing this so I wanted to introduce some new elements to it. We have the new website. We are returning for some new Spooktacular content after being away for a while that hinges partially on this project. I just had to buckle down and accept some direction in my otherwise aimless organic process. So in preparation for talking about this film, I decided to go ahead and fire it up tonight for day 5.

That being said, I think I'm going to try and go somewhat light on breaking down a lot of the actual elements of the film itself and try and stay more from a bird's eye perspective of the things I liked and the things I didn't. There are elements of these that I think will actually go both ways with some overlapping. The first one I want to come charging out of the gates with is the comedy of this film. It is most definitely a horror movie. I'd hesitate to even really introduce the idea that it's a horror comedy at all thought. I believe any comedic elements are used very intentionally as a way of circumventing anything unsettling. There's a tightrope of emotion that is walked throughout much of the film and comedy, even off beat at times, is used rather deliberately to try and lull you in to a false sense of security. It's done so quite well and Duplass is a masterclass in this with this film. In reading a bit about the film, the idea and majority of the movie was born out of improvisational work that Duplass and directory friend Patrick Brice pieced together over the 74 minute film much of it through a rough skeletal structure of desired result and the rest of the make up of the dialogue is ad libbed. This makes it feel very similar to the Christopher Guest comedies such as Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman in that right. The biggest difference being that this is still very much a horror movie through and through.

The second aspect I'd like to cover is the camera work. One of my biggest turn offs for most found footage movies is the camera work is deliberately poorly executed. It's meant to created that terribly natural feel of capturing things on video without being cognizant of it so it feels accidental. While some films do try and get around this by attempting to maintain a certain integrity by implying the entire thing is a film gone wrong, I really enjoy how Creep employs a stylistic but simple approach to this. The directory and co-writer of the film, Patrick Brice, plays Aaron. He's a filmmaker himself who has been contracted for the day to shoot some video with a very eccentric subject who is intending to capture fatherly wisdom and memories in the wake of an impending terminal death due to disease. This provides just enough ambiguity for there to be a subtle sweetness to the potential for the gig but also a somewhat twisted backdrop as behaviors are just erratic enough to be off putting very early on in the film. But despite the physicality of several of the scenes, the film overall doesn't seem to significantly suffer from a lot of that really choppy and sporadic visual style that tends to come with found footage a lot of the time.

The last really positive element I just want to circle back around to is Duplass himself. I know I've gushed a little bit about him and I'm truly not a dedicated fan in any real sense. But he is immediately appealing. Everything he does just has such a simple sophistication in execution. He's quirky but fun. He's playful in a way that makes you question his motives. He "jokes" frequently in ways that start out concerning but somehow also still finds a way back to lulling you into that false sense of security. Even as he puts on the "Peachfuzz" mask, he's somehow actively convincing me there's nothing abnormal about this terrifying wolfman mask that Aaron has stumbled upon. The juxtaposition of comfort and terror in Duplass's performance is really intriguing. You get very solid Kathy Bates in "Misery" vibes but at the same time he's so invitingly pleasant that he keeps pulling down those walls. I don't know that this movie really comes out as well if Duplass isn't solidly int he driver's seat as he is throughout the entire film. Even when things finally get dark in the third act, you see it coming but it's also incredibly surprising. There are plenty of jump scares but they are almost afterthoughts placed there just for a fun little extra when there's something far more nefarious lurking just below the surface. This is what makes the repetitive jump scare moments never really feel taxing or redundant.

So now, lets talk about the elements that didn't work quite as well. This movie wasn't perfect by any means. It was tremendously short at just 74 minutes which always feels like we just didn't try quite hard enough. I don't think there's a magic runtime for horror flicks but any movie that short always feels like it just didn't have the gas to get over the finish line. Additionally, I do want to double back to the comedy. While elements of it really worked for me, on a personal level, I did find some elements of Duplass almost too funny. Not that it was entirely his fault. He wasn't hamming much up for the cameras. He's just a naturally humorous kind of guy in a very dry sense so there were moments where it felt like the comedy short circuited some of the potential frights for me. Again, none of it was over the top by any means. There are plenty of horror comedies that could walk the line a lot tighter to the horror source material but would rather subvert with cheap or easy humor. There didn't really feel like there was a concerted effort to dismantle any truly terrifying moments with a measure of laughter that actually takes you out of the scene. There were just times that Josef was just more than he needed to be humorously and it felt like some of it sanded off an otherwise sharp edge a bit.

Additionally, some of Brice's exposition in the post-Josef experience at home did seem a little too silly to support the tone they had been building. When he was chronicling his dream with Duplass's wacky protagonist, it felt on brand but it also felt just slightly over the top in describing in such detail. I know improv was the culprit and perhaps it could have been reshot and retooled but there were elements that felt like they stifled some of the rising action towards the conclusion of the film.

Ultimately I think I have to put Creep in the A category. I feel like I'm leaning towards an A- just because I don't have that pull to buy the film. I'm not completely out on the idea. I would like to see the second installment to see where it picks up and I'd also be ok with looking into the series that branched off as well. Perhaps its more greatness and maybe its just further indulgence in a ridiculous but horrifying premise. Regardless, I'm only taking slight points off for not making me run to Amazon for a purchase as the credits rolled. I think i could still be sold on the idea potentially but I'm not there. I enjoyed the heck out of the film for sure. But it did feel like something I could consume in one sitting and potentially be permanently satisfied by it. That's the only reason for any downgrade. It was nice to have the film I was assigned be one that turned out to be an incredibly fun ride with me left wanting even more from Duplass in all his sinister hilarity. So in a world permeated with found footage trash, Creep is the way to go. It will unsettle you by making you laugh and them immediately switching directions and intensely moving the action in a completely different direction. If you've been sitting on the fence on this one, I can testify that it's worth the time. It's a low investment at well less than an hour and a half and every minute is used rather wisely in my estimation. That brings us to the end of our fifth day as our first week of horror is nearly under the belt. Glad I got this one for my first assignment. Hopefully Ron can keep the winners coming as we move through October. For now though, we'll have to wait and see what day six has in store tomorrow. Until then, I'll catch you on the flip side.