[31 Days of Horror 3] Day 29 – Creep (2014)

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Director: Patrick Brice

Cast: Mark Duplass, Patrick Brice

Screenplay: Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass

77 mins. Rated R for brief violence and language.

 

So take a look up there and notice the credits I’ve supplied. Now tell me how many people it took to make this film. It’s true: Patrick Brice (The Overnight) directed, he and Mark Duplass (TV’s The League, The Lazarus Effect) wrote and starred. The film is Creep, a small 2014 film that’s been received quite well. Let’s turn on the found-footage and have a watch.

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Brice plays Aaron, a videographer answering a Craigslist ad for a small one-day job with Josef (Duplass), a man dying of his terminal illness who wishes to capture a day in his life for his unborn son. As Aaron and Josef spend more time together, it’s clear that Josef is not all that he seems.

I want to describe the film further, but that’s about it. This is not a complex plot by any stretch of the imagination, and it also isn’t all that surprising of a story. It’s the genuine way the story unfolds that wins here. It also is a film with a lot of important but unnecessary dialogue, as in you don’t have to catch a lot of the dialogue but it’s pretty fun when you get what’s really going on.

The issues I had? First, the title is terrible. I would rather something more inconspicuous. Same with Duplass’s performance, which all but gives away his character. The film should be less obvious than it ends up being. The clues that are given are a bit too on the nose and it’s noticeable.

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I don’t want to get much more into it. This is an easy film to watch and a fairly short and to the point kind of movie. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t all that engaging either. It’s a nice simple little movie. I’m excited to see where they take the story for parts 2 and 3 of this supposed trilogy.

 

3/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

31 Days of Horror Part II: Day 16 – Big Ass Spider! (2013)

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Director: Mike Mendez

Cast: Greg Grunberg, Lin Shaye, Patrick Bauchau, Ray Wise, Clare Kramer, Lombardo Boyar, Ruben Pla

Screenplay: Gregory Gieras

80 mins. Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and gore.

 

Apparently Mike Mendez (The Gravedancers, Tales of Halloween) fought like hell to keep the title Big Ass Spider! He was right, though unfortunately there is little else to draw one in.

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Alex Mathis (Greg Grunberg, TV’s Heroes, Super 8) is an expert exterminator (ignore the part at the beginning where he is bit by an apparently lethal spider). His expertise comes to great importance as the hospital that he’s in has an extremely dangerous spider that quadruples in size at an alarming rate. Now, Alex and his de facto partner Jose (Lombardo Boyar, Happy Feet, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) attempt to stop the mammoth bug while a team of government agents led by Major Braxton C. Tanner (Ray Wise, RoboCop, The Lazarus Effect) attempt to blow it out of the sky, putting millions at risk.

This title brought me in. The film put me out. I actually really like Greg Grunberg but I don’t feel like he is ready to lead a movie, even one like Big Ass Spider! He is joined by Boyar who plays off as a cliché token Hispanic. The only man who plays to this film’s strengths is Wise, who delivers a goofy satire of the by-the-numbers Major. I also enjoyed the “cameo” by Lin Shaye (There’s Something About Mary, Insidious: Chapter 3).

Big Ass Spider! has some actually engaging effects, but the screenplay didn’t move along in any way that actually interested me, choosing to embrace its B-Movie possibilities rather poorly.

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All in all, get a laugh out of the fact that somebody actually made a movie called Big Ass Spider! No, you don’t actually have to watch the movie.

 

2/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

 

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