Sharing movies with loved ones is a beautiful thing. As beautiful as it is, I think we have all experienced a moment while watching a movie with a parent or any comparable figure, where the thing taking place on screen was so uncomfortable you wish the couch would swallow you whole. We’re going to try and avoid that as much as possible! I hope this works as a sort of guide for you to know when you should excuse yourself to refill the popcorn bowl and avoid the wrath of a disgruntled or disgusted parent. This month we will be diving into the 2014 found-footage gem, CREEP. Let’s see if my mom thinks the experience lives up to the name…
Creepy!
The movie begins with one of our two main characters, Aaron (played by co-writer and director Patrick Brice) filming with his handheld camera as he drives to his latest videography assignment. My mom immediately groaned, saying “Oh it’s one of those where it seems like it’s real,” which is now my favorite way of referring to found-footage. The subject of Aaron’s assignment is our titular creep, Josef (played by other co-writer Mark Duplass) and the closer we got to arriving at his house with Aaron, the more creeped out my mom became. It helped that my mom and I were actually able to watch CREEP in person together because we were on our family vacation at Lake Michigan, and my mom was dismayed to learn this movie takes place near a lake because, “that means it could happen to us!”
Soon after meeting, Josef reveals to Aaron that he’s dying of a brain tumor and wants to film a video diary for his unborn son. What at first seems like a sad but sweet assignment soon takes a turn for the creepy when Josef brings Aaron into the bathroom for “tubby time” as he takes a bath while pretending to bathe his infant son. This made my mother so nervous that she started compulsively eating cheese and crackers that we had laid out for the experience. Her stress eating continued, making it incredibly ironic when she complained that Josef was eating his pancakes too erratically as the two were sharing breakfast at a diner. I didn’t say anything because she was very right, the way he ate those pancakes was nearly violent. At the same breakfast, Josef tells Aaron a meandering story about shame that culminates in him revealing that he raped his wife. This was met with UTTER silence from my mother. I couldn’t even look at her to gauge a reaction, my ears were burning red with my own shame.
The creep factor is back in full force when we return to Josef’s house and he shows off his terrifying wolf mask that he affectionately refers to as Peachfuzz. It’s just unpleasant to look at, and my mom responded with a simple “no thanks.” It becomes clear that Josef has no intention of letting Aaron leave. He keeps insisting Aaron drink with him and shows a suspicious level of nonchalance when Aaron can’t find his car keys. Thinking fast, Aaron drugs Josef with a large amount of Benadryl and intercepts a phone call from who he believes to be his wife. The woman on the phone is actually Josef’s sister and she gravely tells Aaron to get out of that house as fast as he can. My mom seemed most upset by the fact that Josef lied to Aaron given that her only response was to scream, “Her BROTHER!” It was at this point she also let me know that this movie was making her stomach hurt but allow me to remind you of the copious amounts of cheese we were eating earlier in CREEP’s runtime. You can make your own conclusions.
Aaron makes a run for it, only to be intercepted by Josef, who is very much awake and wearing the Peachfuzz mask. Ever since the introduction of the mask, my mom was correctly insistent that it would come back in some horrifying way. As right as she was, she did keep calling it the “fuddy bear” mask which just made me laugh. The act of him wearing the mask alone was upsetting enough for my mom as she said, “You know how I hate mascots.” Aaron does end up escaping, but we get another bone chilling moment after he returns home and the audience can see Josef standing in the window at Aaron’s door. My mom was absolutely HOWLING when she finally saw him, and isn’t that what it’s all about?
Jump Scares
I would be remiss not to mention that CREEP dabbles heavily in the art of the jump scare. This is evidenced almost immediately when Aaron pulls up to Josef’s house only to have Josef bang on his window in a deliberate attempt to scare him. This had my mom (and me, let’s be real) screaming so loud that other people in the house got mad at us. I regretfully had to inform her that there was going to be a lot of that in this movie because Josef makes it his goal to try and scare Aaron as often as possible. As a concept, that’s pretty hilarious, but the execution nearly killed my mother. In particular, the initial reveal of the Peachfuzz mask is really comically startling, and CREEP has a classic jump scare button at the very end of the movie, both of which sent my mother out of her seat, clutching her heart. This movie should really come with an arrhythmia warning.
Nudity
This section will be very brief but very necessary, because in the aforementioned tubby time, Josef strips nude. Luckily for my mom, however, this scene reached her absolute threshold of nudity, and I would like to share those specifications with you now: “Just pubes, no peenie.”
Sincere Joy
Now this category is one not often seen in Will Mom Like This?, and it’s one I would not count on seeing again in the near future, but my mom experienced a lot of sincere joy while watching CREEP. I’m smiling as I write this because this movie is such a blast, and having my mom enjoy it alongside me made for a really fun time. Mark Duplass as Josef is such a goof that we couldn’t help but laugh at his antics, despite his … unsettling demeanor.
In addition to being funny, however, this movie has some genuinely delightful scares as well. For example, the moment where Aaron is trying to leave Josef’s home and says, “Have you seen my keys?” is such a loaded, frightening moment, but it left my mom and I squealing in delight. My mom also really liked Aaron and was so relieved that he made it home alive. It was very refreshing to see her root for a main character to live instead of chastising them for their idiotic decisions.
However, if you’ve seen CREEP (and if you haven’t, what are you doing? Get out of here and watch it!) you know Aaron does not live to see the end of the film. I knew that this would put a damper on my mom’s joy, and I was so right. In the final scene of CREEP, Aaron agrees to meet Josef at the lake, where Josef sneaks up behind him, wearing the Peachfuzz mask, and kills him with an axe. As soon as Josef appeared in the frame, my mom shouted a string of “no no no no no no,” only stopping to scream a distraught, “Come on! STOP!” But alas, her screams did not change the course of the movie, and she was very sad to see Aaron go.
Did Mom Like That?
So, the time came to ask the question, did Mom like that? And folks, today is a big day because: Mom liked that! She really liked it! 4/5 moms would recommend. I would say only stray away from watching CREEP with a parental figure if they’re really averse to jump scares, because this thing is chock full of them. However, if their issue is with blood and gore, then you should be in the clear, because there is really none to be found in CREEP. Sure, you have Aaron getting axed, but it’s shot from so far away that you don’t see anything at all. I recommend giving it a try, because if you have even a fraction of the fun my mom and I did, you’re in for an incredibly heartwarming experience, as I’m sure the filmmakers intended. I mean, I suppose it wasn’t perfect in her eyes because she told me, “It’s no TRAIN TO BUSAN, but that was good.” And it’s true that try as we might, we can’t all be TRAIN TO BUSAN.
A lifelong horror obsessive despite still having to shut her eyes and plug her ears when there's a jump scare coming. Some personal favorites include The Descent (2005), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and It (any). (She/her)
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Tags: Columns, Drama, Found-Footage, Horror, Mark Duplass, Patrick Brice, Suspense
A couple Christmases ago I got my dad, my step-mom, and my brother to watch Creep 2. I don’t know how I pulled that off considering a previous Christmas I had us flipping between It’s A Wonderful Life and Freddy VS Jason on cable. As expected my dad was scandalized but my brother and step-mom liked it. I don’t know if this site has spoiler tags but my dad’s reaction to the almost-ending was priceless. Just utter disgust. “Whyyyy would you have us watch this?”
I really didn’t like the first Creep because the guy was just too dumb and it made me too irritated to enjoy it. That said, I think Creep 2 is a modern classic. They actually put him up against someone with a functioning brain and a motivation to stick around. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game where you lose track of who is manipulating who and there’s also a certain moral ambiguity to it. Apparently Mark Duplass doesn’t think it was as good as it could have been, which is pretty funny.