Day 10 of 365: Creep

The mumblecore cinema movement has spawned just about every subgenre you can imagine and horror is no exception. Mark Duplass has long been a champion of the mumblers and made many a shaggy narrative. In this movie, Duplass pretty much has to carry the entire thing by himself. The only other character is the director Patrick Kack-Brice, who plays a man hired to record a dying man's last message to his wife and son.

Things get creepy slowly as Duplass is "just kidding around" about things that are increasingly dangerous or upsetting. If he weren't so damn charismatic, the entire premise would fall apart as soon as the camera man felt uneasy the first time. But Duplass has a way of lulling Kack-Brice and the audience back into a false sense of security. By the time a werewolf mask comes out, things should be too far gone to stop but somehow, they keep going.

The ending takes one beat too many (the lake should be the last shot, in my opinion) but goes out of its way to address the who, how and why of found footage that sometimes never gets answered. This is good, subtle horror on a nothing budget. I really liked it.