Creep DVD Review:

London Underground. Those two words are enough to bring savage feelings of horror, scorn and derision from any self-respecting Londoner and while it may not be the best place for efficient travel around the capital it certainly makes for a very inviting location to shoot a horror film. Which must have been just what director Christopher Smith was thinking when he made this strangely uninvolving tale. Our protagonist, Kate (Franka Potente), leaves a party in pursuit of some nocturnal loving but after a night boozing and a few puffs on the old Mary Jane she falls asleep at Charing Cross tube station (we’ve all done it) and awakes to find herself trapped underground with a murderous unseen assailant prowling the tunnels intent on killing her. Just another typical Friday night in London then, you might say, but while a Friday night in London has the potential to engage and amuse, this film does neither.

The idea is intriguing and the place certainly has the right ambience to make a horror film, with it’s empty but threatening passages and subterranean tunnels, but, while Smith makes the blood occasionally run luke-warm with some pretty smart shots of the empty tube station the actual film feels, much like the disused tunnels, rather hollow. As for providing scares, I might say I was more frightened by Care Bears: The Movie than I was by this; the central ghoul, if that’s what he is, looks like a demented, hairless Lemony Snicket with a penchant for human organs, but he does look a bit on the thin side so maybe he could do with the protein.

The characterisation in the film is pretty poor, leaving us hardly rooting for the heroine or feeling any sympathy for the predator or his prey. It doesn’t compete as just a generic slasher flick either, but it does display some of it’s traits – the female heroine, the subjugation and mutilation of the fairer sex and the inevitable chase scenes down darkened, claustrophobic spaces - however unlike the great slasher flicks of old the reasons behind this central demon’s undertakings are never fully explained. Now why should they, you say, perhaps it makes it even more fearful if the methods behind the madness are left unknown. Very true, but the film feels like it wants to explain it. Dotted about the madman’s subterranean dungeon are framed photograph’s of a figure in a white doctor’s jacket, with a strange looking child next to him who one can only presume is Mr Snicket himself. Perhaps he is only doing this because of some heinous Peeping Tom style experiments conducted by his father (see DVD extras for the full explanation behind this). Possibly, but it is never elucidated and in all honesty I didn’t really care how he got to be like he did because I felt no empathy for him at all. I felt more empathy for the two wayward smack heads that live in a cave behind the walls. Poor little Mandy, left for dead by the selfish tyranny of evil Kate, but after a short while, I was soon rooting for their deaths as well. The actual deaths do appear quite graphically and the effects look fairly real, but we’re not talking anything particularly spectacular here, it’s no real-time man to werewolf metamorphosis, just a bit of aptly done gore.

It’s a shame considering this is an Anglo-Germanic production that it couldn’t have rested alongside the mantel with the recent spate of new wave horrors from Asia that have whet our appetites after Wes Craven’s reinvention of the genre with Scream became a parody of it’s own parodying. Sadly rather than a sense of national pride we are left with the image of a dejected and vagabonded Kate, traumatised and shaken after the events of the film, unable to comprehend what has just happened to her. I must admit I felt the same. I think the film would have scored more favourably if they had substituted the female lead with our very own Ken Livingstone. Now that’s a film I’d like to see.

Audio/Visual

The film is presented in 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Both are good quality, with the dreary sounds echoing from the subterranean tunnels clearly heard and the image down the darkened corridors being crisp and clear.

Extras

Subtitles

Commentary with director Christopher Smith

Making of Creep
The cast, crew and director talk about how they made the film and what their aims and goals were. Christopher Smith talks about his influences being the slasher and horror flicks of the 1970’s like ‘I Spit On Your Grave’. It’s hard to see these influences in the finished film though.

Production Design Featurette
The set designers talk about how the film was shot on location in London and on various sets designed in Germany, like the underground laboratory and the Creeps’ submerged dungeon.

Makeup Featurette
Probably the most interesting of the three featurettes, as the films effects are realistic enough and admirably done. We are informed that the special effects are the first to be made from silicon prosthetics, which are very durable and lightweight, so now you know.

Frightfest Q & A
Director and star discuss some pretty mundane questions with some pretty mundane people.

Alternative Titles
You can click through a list of names that could have been. Like ‘Here Kitty Kitty’ and ‘Piccadilly Nightmare’. My particular favourite was ‘Horunden’. Nope I don’t know what it means either.

Alternative Beginning
Interestingly and lamentably Smith tells us that he only storyboarded this beginning and that it never got filmed. It concerns the Creep and offers an explanation into his past. It’s a crying shame really as the film would have been given a greater coherency had they included this and it would have helped the audience to empathise with the Creep character, which Smith keeps telling us is what he wanted.

Alternative Ending
Again this ending was never shot and in my opinion it’s better than the current one, but Smith says they didn’t have the budget to pull it off effectively. It’s a shame because if they had gone with both this and the alternative beginning, it would have been a better film. Oh well, we live, we learn.

Trailer and TV spot



Kevin Holmes