Brit writer-director Christopher Smith presents his first full feature-length offering with Creep, a grubby little horror flick about a Gollum look-a-like hiding in the London Underground and doing all sorts of nasty things to complete strangers.
It stars the once-promising Franka Potente as Kate, a German party gal whos on her way to woo George Clooney (and not, disappointingly, David Hasselhoff) when she nods off at Charing Cross Station, misses the last train, and ends up locked in for the night. She soon discovers, of course, that shes not alone not even close to it in fact, because shes soon accompanied by a couple of tramps, a sewage worker, and the flaky-skinned gore-flicker of the title.
Dubbed Craap upon its release by senseless internet message board wags, this at-times disturbing tube yarn starts off reasonably enough but doesnt take long to grow tiresome and also a bit silly. Smith shows he has considerable potential as a director, displaying an effective, distinctive style behind the camera, with an approach nicely-suited to the horror genre but, on this occasion, his own story badly lets him down. The premise is too weak and one-dimensional to fill out the relatively-short 85-minute running time, the tale increasingly comes to rely upon the downright implausible, and the pedestrian dialogue leaves the decent cast looking distinctly uninspired. The decision to allow us to see the villain in full light halfway into the film is also a major error, particularly as hes instantly recognisable as a bloke in a body stocking with some unconvincing make-up plastered onto the outside.
Fans of Run Lola Run will enjoy this latest opportunity to see Potente doing lots of running about looking stressed (for old times sake, if nothing else), but Creep is noteworthy for little else. Too weak and unoriginal for seasoned horror fans and too gruesome for the casual viewer, its caught in a sort of cinematic No Mans Land or perhaps that should be No Audience Land.