This film holds no scares and gets rather tedious with the stupidity of the situation the lead woman is in. I guess there is a tiny ounce of chills in knowing the tubes of London and finding yourself alone down there could be creepy, but the whole creature menace isn’t terrifying and the characters are all so paper thin that you kind of want this thing to win.
‘Creep’ finds Kate (Franka Potente) leaving a party to try and find her friend and get lucky with George Clooney, yes really. Cabs and no change machines make her journey troublesome and after some odd decision to swig alcohol before the last train she ends up sleeping and waking up in a deserted and locked down Charing Cross. Luckily or unluckily as the case may be she is joined by another party goer, Guy (Jeremy Sheffield) who is only the tip of the sleazeball mountain as she finds herself being hunted down by an underground monster.
I think this film had potential, it’s nice to see an un-scream queen central character and the setting is undeniably tense but decisions are filled with silliness and plot holes and the entirety of who this creepy creature or as I’ll call him creepture is never gets a significant time to shine, there’s something of substance there where they could have been smart and made the creepture the hero or at least have an anti-hero status but the psychopathic level he demonstrates gives no time for that.
It’s not even an overly scary or frightening film, there’s traces of suspense and dread as Kate finds herself on a train that’s stopped in the midst of a tunnel and the weird cage things that come into play later are a claustrophobic scenario but there are so many handy situations that help Kate out that it becomes annoying, you want the final killing tool miss? Sure, here you go, just lying here for you. Gaps in the cages? Sorted. Yet she makes a string of stupid choices and don’t get me started on how badly written the night guard is. Why would he not be doing anything, ‘needs to see the body’. Jesus!
I did rather like the portrayal of this tormented tube terror and Sean Harris gives him that extra shudder factor as he pounces and stalks his way around the underground network. In my eyes he’s the redeeming quality of the whole movie and as previously said I wish he had more, the whole facility and vague hinting at his past isn’t really enough and there’s no explanation to why, how and what he’s doing down there apart from just killing and eating people. Harris can and thankfully has done better since. Franka Potente is a class actress and gives Kate a fresh unlikable edge and I suppose her ending is a sort of cool little twist on her as a person from how she started in the film. Potente eats up the dingy tunnels as much as she can but the script and limited scares don’t help her out much.
You know how this film is going to look and sound just from the opening alone, with two sewage workers spewing out some diabolical dialogue in near darkness and if you’re supposed to be apprehensive about the fate of these guys then the film fails big time. There’s a shocking level of bad writing to do with the characters, it’s a wonder that the majority of the actors manage to keep some dignity intact. It’s an odd film that switches from horror cliches to grindhouse gory picture material and neither ever feel spot on.
A chance for an interesting and tense exploration of a frankly perfect location for a horror is kicked to the wayside for cheap and nasty characters, a gross villain and nothing much else sadly.
4.5/10
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