Reviews

I wasn't originally intending to review this movie. I watched it one bored weeknight on Netflix about a month ago. When it was over, I didn't think too much about it. I thought it was a competent mumblecore-type found-footage film that suffers from many of the same weaknesses of movies in that general category. Why would he be filming right now? Why wouldn't Aaron just do x in this situation? Etc. etc.

But I keep revisiting it in my mind, and certain scenes in particular. There is something insidious about this movie that is hard to articulate, and which sneaks up on me every once in a while when I am having a quiet moment alone in public in the middle of the day. This movie is a little different to me now that it has had time to marinate.

This may be something that is very specific to me, but I once worked in criminal defense and in that capacity I dealt at length with many people who had serious mental health issues that were directly related to the heinous crimes they were accused of committing. I have spent endless hours talking to individuals who seem friendly and intelligent, though often a little odd, who I know are accused of slicing up someone's insides and burning the body, all in the name of banishing the devils or their mother.

It is difficult to explain the feeling of observing a massive disconnect between someone's demeanor and the things that you know they have done. Killers with pronounced mental illness are not the way they are portrayed on television. But they are often similar to the way Josef's character is portrayed in this movie. Outwardly, seems quirky but friendly enough. You know (at a certain point) they have done something heinous, but it is easy to forget this when they fail to do anything unambiguously evil in your presence for a time. You empathize with them, and start to believe the things they say to you, before some tiny thing that's off in just the right way brings you crashing back to the weird reality that you are interacting with a person who has something inside them that you don't understand.

It is not just Josef, however, that really ramps up the uneasy feeling I get from contemplating this movie. It's the entire structure. Found footage films that are low-budget and dialogue- heavy are more amenable to scattered plot lines that do not present the same linear progression typical of more polished or high-budget horror films. In Creep, stuff happens, then other stuff happens, then it ends in a really bizarre, almost serene way. There are very few questions that are definitively answered. Why did things happen the way they did? Why does Josef do what he does? I acknowledge the criticism from other reviewers that they feel left hanging with unanswered queries. And I am here to express that, at the end of the day, this frustration may be reflective of the unexpected experience of watching a movie that is much closer to the disorganized truth about being murdered than one might think.

And that, my friends, is why this movie is capital-C Creepy. It's a bit of a slow burn, but worth it in the end. I believe, too, that this is intentional on the part of the filmmakers. I have seen plenty of movies that are similar on a superficial level, but where criticisms about cheap scares and weird scenes are a result of sloppiness or poor writing. I don't think that is the case here.

At the time of writing, I have seen all of season one and the first episode of season 2.

I've seen other reviews on here that talk about how impossible it is to watch this show if you have any legal knowledge, and I would just like to add my two cents to this topic. I sympathize. I'm a lawyer, and have worked in criminal defence (once upon a time), and I, too, generally have a really hard time watching any legal dramas whatsoever. Television takes egregious liberties with the justice system, and shows that portray the practice of law are difficult to watch when they are wildly inaccurate, and it is frustrating to witness protagonists do things that you know are illegal or unethical. As annoying as this is, the tendency is understandable—even criminal law is only so compelling in real life. The assumption is that most viewers do not have legal training, and that nobody—lawyers included—will watch a show where competent, ethical practitioners stay at the office late looking up cases on Quicklaw, fiddling with binding machines, and trying not to smudge pad thai sauce on their prelim transcripts.

This show, however, is so ridiculous that it actually rose to the level of suspension of disbelief required for me, at least, to still enjoy it. It is basically a soap opera. Trying to subject it to human logic is a pointless exercise that will inevitably leave you discombobulated, shouting at the sky about injustice or whatever people do once they've discovered their whole life is a lie.

For instance, I would be hard pressed to conceive of a more profound conflict of interest than that contained in the season 1 episode 10 court scene if someone bet me $100 and a case of beer (I won't describe it in the interests of no spoilers--the blame-shifting thing). And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Every other thing that every character does in this show would get you summarily disbarred, fired, or charged with something.

At the end of the day however, that is not the point. This show seems to know exactly how over-the-top it is. But rather than trying to scale back the insanity in the name of realism, it revels in knocking it right into twelfth gear. Left and right, people are lying to each other or the court, sleeping around and committing felonies—sometimes at the same time—because why not? The degree of accuracy is so low that the mercury drops out the bottom of the thermometer and creates a rift in the space-time continuum. It fails so hard it wins. It is the Hearts equivalent of shooting the moon.

So get some popcorn and get comfy. Try to resist the analytical voice in your head that keeps screaming "No!" and just let it wash over you. Everything will be fine.

A story we've all heard before: a wacky adventure in the Great White North, where some redneck Canadians talk about hockey and say 'aboot' a lot, before our arrogant protagonist named Wallace gets drugged up by an aged seafarer hellbent on turning him into a walrus. Typical Manitoba, amiright?

In terms of what it was aiming for, this movie is pretty pitch- perfect. It doesn't purport to be sympathetic, or realistic, or particularly horrifying, and it is none of those things. While there are certainly moments of legitimate disgust (I watched this movie having consumed nothing but coffee all day; needless to say it did not help my stomach settle all that much), the movie is primarily a totally surreal, intentionally schlocky romp into a quirky alternate reality, where Not-See Party (get it?) is a legitimate podcast name and Johnny Depp is a hammed-up (European) French person masquerading as a Quebecer with a few loose screws.

This movie is most certainly not for everybody. It borders on torture porn, and I think fairly compared to the Human Centipede in a number of respects. However, the trailer is a fair reflection of the movie's atmosphere and plot. I found nothing in the movie particularly surprising, and it goes about how you would expect. It really does not take itself that seriously, and while it is certainly not a laugh-out-loud, ha-ha kind of funny, it's funny in a disbelieving, "did they really just go there?" kind of way. That is, it doesn't tell jokes; it revels in gory absurdity.

If that is not your thing, then it's not your thing and you probably won't enjoy this movie. I personally found it highly entertaining, but would be wary of recommending it to anyone without a whole series of qualifying inquiries about their tastes in movies.