Because of an intriguing series on Shudder, I believe I mentioned that I watched Creep a few months ago. In addition to that show, there was also a sequel, and now I watched it too! Please note that this review will include spoilers for the first movie, although I think not any for Creep 2, which wears its premise on its sleeve with no coyness of any kind.
There’s this lady Sara with a youtube series called Encounters, where she trolls weird lonely people posts on Craigslist so she can film it, and gain a viewership via awkward art. And she comes across the eponymous creep from the first movie, now going by the name Aaron, who wants to tell her his story about being the most prolific unsuspected serial killer in history. We as the audience know this is almost certainly true, but she as the unwitting subject of her own film does not, and that is the tension of the movie.
It’s hard to judge the effectiveness of the first movie’s “is he or isn’t he” premise, since I already knew. So take it with a grain of salt when I say I liked this one better. But the character in the first movie was definitely going against his own instincts way past the point of believability, even if (and this is key), the creep had just been an awkward dude who wasn’t going to murder anyone. Whereas Sara definitely knows he’s hinky and troubling right out of the gate, but she keeps staying because this is the fulfillment of her dream, and she deems the payoff worth the risk.
And so they dance back and forth, and I can honestly say that at no point did I know how the movie would turn out. When you consider that this film came between a prior movie and a six episode TV series, that’s kind of impressive?