It’s interesting when you see how many found footage films are about people making documentaries about something and getting in over their heads. Like, are that many people MAKING docs these days? I guess in this case it’s ‘true crime’ and that’s a big ‘thing’ lately so…maybe?
I guess?
For MR. CREEP I credit them for having these filmmakers be students trying to do a project for a class. It’s a familiar trope but it works. They even explain the ages of everyone, not pretending that they are young kids but are adults trying to get through college.
I appreciate that.
MISTER CREEP follows a small team of filmmakers as they endeavor to shoot a documentary film about the disappearance of a family for a project for college. The team aren’t into their project and one of them offers a new idea – the story of a serial killer whose existence was hidden by the authorities and who was put to death. They wore a clown mask and filmed their victims and broadcasted the videos on a mystery signal that people coud occasionally pick up. The team decides to purse it, since they are local to where the killer worked, but as they investigate the story and realize that it isn’t just a fairy tale, they also start to realize that the killer may have been more dangerous than even the police had thought. They also find out…he may not be gone.
This is an interesting and often frustrating movie. It shouldn’t work, by premise alone – a serial killer that killed 200 people, had a ‘schtick’, put out murder videos, AND was executed SECRETLY? Girl, please. YET, this works. The interview segments we get with Mister Creep are underplayed and very creepy. The addition of a strage doll is creepy. The mythos is sorta creepy. There’s a lot of great bones here on a body that isn’t really healthy. The acting is decent but the set up is thin and the logic is dodgy, and darn it, I hate when it’s supposed to be THEIR footage and yet someone else edited it and added title cards and music interludes. RARR! And jeepers creepers is it helpful that all of the things you need are RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE! This could really be something with a little more work on the script and story.
The acting is passable. The segments that step out of the story to show ‘real’ documentary footage is really well done. It’s filmed well enough. It’s well made, to be sure. The problem is more in the stretches of logic it wants you to do and the holes in the story that are there. It will remind you of several other films but there’s a point in the subgenre where that’s to be expected.
As the climax unfolds we get a lot of dodgy logic, ideas borrowed from other films, and a lot of shaky cam work. Yet, again, there’s a lot of stuff done well. If they had stuck with the ‘real’ doc footage and not the making of the student doc it woulda worked better and felt stronger. As it stands, it’s a curiosity with a lot of creep value that collapses under the wet paper of the rest of the film. There are just oo many questions left unanswered and too much frustration to overcome.
Some folks will for sure dig its vibe though and be totally into it, so head over to Tubi and take a peek.
2.75 out of 5
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 