“Creep 2” is one of the better horror sequels of recent memory. There’s not a lot that I can say about its plot without spoiling some major elements of this oddly innovative film, so I will refrain, in this review, from doing very much plot summary at all.
Suffice it to say that after a brief cold open involving Karan Soni (“Deadpool“) the film contains itself to two characters: Mark Duplass’s Aaron (a name that will have significance to fans of the first “Creep”) and Desiree Akhavan’s (the writer-director-star of 2015’s breakout indie rom-com “Appropriate Behavior”) Sara. Sara is an aspiring documentarian whose lack of success has made her question her own skill (“I think I might be deeply untalented,” she says early on). She’s been doing a web-based docu-series wherein she seeks out the strange men who post strange things on the strange website known as Craigslist, and simply does whatever they are looking for. One guy wants to be “Mommied,” which ends up involving much cradling and lullabies. Another just wants someone to talk to, poolside, in the back of his gigantic mansion.
One day, Sara finds a post from a man looking for a videographer. The exact nature of the project is vague, but the Craigslist ad notes that being a fan of “Interview With a Vampire” is a plus. The man turns out to be Duplass’s Aaron, the serial killer from the first “Creep,” who has an offer for Sara that is significantly different from his offer to Patrick Brice’s character in the previous film. Aaron’s proposition to Sara is one of the more ingenious concepts (and sequences) in this indie-horror follow-up.
Brice, who wrote and directed the original film, returns to direct the sequel from a script co-written by Duplass. His direction is flawless here, inasmuch as it looks precisely like a middlingly shitty YouTube video for most of its run, while allowing the character of Sara (who spends most of the movie manning the handheld camera) to demonstrate an eye for framing, contrast, and various other recent-film-school-graduate directorial flairs.
Duplass is so very excellent in these movies: true to the title, he’s creepy as all get out. But there’s more to the character, especially here in the sequel. There’s even a scene where Duplass had me tearing up, genuinely sad for his sociopathic murderous villain, even as I knew that the monologue he was giving was likely 95% untrue.
Akhavan is perfect in this; she has an incredibly enigmatic screen presence. Sara is written so unexpectedly and provocatively that you never quite know what she’s going to do next, and Akhavan leans into that to such an extent that she feels like an actual documentary subject at times.
And the dynamic between the two characters is lightning-in-a-bottle stuff. Duplass and Akhavan have singularly creepy chemistry: neither of them is a typical Hollywood lead for a reason. There’s an edge to both of them — particularly Duplass — that makes the duo difficult to take your eyes off of.
It’s when “Creep 2” focuses on the documentary stuff, the character stuff, that it shines. It explores the mind of “Aaron” more deeply than the first film, something its singular premise gives it the requisite space to accomplish. Because here’s the thing: “Creep 2” is — to its benefit — much less a horror film than “Creep.” Sara’s constitution is much stronger than Brice’s character’s, and the very fact that she doesn’t scare easily rubs off on us. This gives us space to focus more heavily on the characters and story. All of which is distinctly an improvement.
Toward the end of its third act, “Creep 2” does lean a bit further into tropes of the “found-footage horror” genre, and it’s at that point that it loses some of its originality. At a certain point, I realized precisely where it was headed and found myself begging the screen to avoid the cliches it was demonstrably veering into. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not it did avoid them, but I will say that the finale is certainly less subversive than what precedes it.
Luckily, the first two acts do enough of the subversive heavy-lifting to ensure this sequel surpasses the original in terms of its story, characters, and all-around consistency of quality. It utilizes the constraints of the single location and incredibly minimal characters about as well as a film on this scale can, making you wish that more filmmakers were capable of producing content this good on a scale this small. It’s kind of mindboggling that we don’t get more films of this quality on a regular basis; truly, “Creep 2” must have cost nothing — relatively — to make. It’s an impressive achievement, one worthy of sincere praise, regardless as to any perceived stumbles in its perhaps-too-conventional finale.
Rant on micro-budget filmmaking aside, “Creep 2” is a more-than-solid October stream. It’s fun, has two engaging actors giving two fantastic performances, and may even scare you once or twice (though I kinda sorta doubt it). I genuinely look forward to the third and final entry in the “Creep” trilogy, and will be there for whatever Brice ends up doing next. Because he’s the type of filmmaker that deserves the cult following that the “Creep” series is in the process of accruing on his behalf. [B]