The Horror of Saying “Sure, I’ll Film You in the Woods”
Every so often, a horror film crawls out of the indie swamp, looks at you through the camera lens, and whispers, “You probably shouldn’t have trusted that guy from Craigslist.” Patrick Brice’s Creep (2014) is one of those films. It’s found footage at its finest—and most unhinged.
Directed by Brice (his debut) and co-written by Brice and Mark Duplass, Creep manages to be deeply funny, unnervingly awkward, and existentially horrifying all at once. It’s like My Dinner with Andre, if one of them was a pathological liar who might kill you, and the other was too polite to leave.
If you’ve ever met someone off the internet and thought, “They seem a little weird, but what’s the worst that could happen?” — congratulations, this movie is your punishment.
The Plot: One Man, One Camera, and Infinite Red Flags
The story is deceptively simple. Aaron (Patrick Brice) is a broke videographer who answers a Craigslist ad from a man named Josef (Mark Duplass). The job: record Josef for one day at his mountain cabin as he makes a “video diary” for his unborn son before dying of brain cancer.
So far, so heartwarming, right?
Within five minutes of meeting him, Josef strips naked and climbs into a bubble bath, pretending to bathe his imaginary child. Aaron keeps filming because, well, he’s already driven up the mountain, and freelance life is hard.
From there, things spiral beautifully out of control. Josef alternates between charming and horrifying with the ease of someone who’s spent a lifetime confusing manipulation for friendship. One moment, he’s giving heartfelt speeches about legacy. The next, he’s lunging out of doorways with the kind of manic energy that says, “I definitely keep bones in the freezer.”
Aaron, to his credit, tries to leave multiple times—but like every good horror protagonist, he suffers from terminal politeness. He keeps getting sucked back in by Josef’s tragic stories, weird confessions, and surprisingly disarming sincerity. It’s the kind of gaslighting so effective you half expect Josef to invoice him for emotional labor.
Mark Duplass: The Nicest Sociopath in Found Footage
Let’s be honest: Creep lives and dies on Mark Duplass’s performance—and thankfully, it mostly lives, though not comfortably.
Duplass gives Josef a vibe that can only be described as “the guy you meet at Whole Foods who insists on hugging you too long.” He’s all warm smiles and dad jokes, but his eyes say, “I’ve seen what your organs look like.”
This is not a loud horror villain. He’s not Freddy Krueger cracking one-liners or a masked man with a machete. Josef’s terror comes from his unpredictability. You never know whether he’s going to offer you a smoothie or a shallow grave.
There’s something magnetic about him. You want to look away, but you can’t. He’s the embodiment of awkward danger—a man who weaponizes vulnerability like a scalpel.
And somehow, Duplass makes him funny. Not in a “haha” way, but in a “oh God, please stop talking” way. His weird little dance in the Peachfuzz wolf mask—a grotesque, low-budget Beauty and the Beast routine—belongs in the Museum of Unintentional Comedy and Psychological Trauma.
The Peachfuzz Incident (A.K.A. The Moment You Should’ve Left)
Let’s talk about Peachfuzz—the film’s unofficial mascot and proof that Halloween masks should come with warning labels.
Aaron finds the mask in Josef’s closet, a rubber wolf head with the expression of a taxidermy experiment gone wrong. Josef, ever the storyteller, explains that Peachfuzz was his father’s alter ego, a symbol of love and protection. Then he uses it to simulate bestial rape in a story so grotesque it makes Silence of the Lambs look like a bedtime story.
At this point, any sane person would have run down the mountain, called an Uber, and joined the witness protection program. But Aaron, our sweet naïve hero, stays. Because this is a found footage movie, and bad decisions are oxygen.
Found Footage Done Right (and Wrong, and Then Right Again)
Let’s give Brice credit: he understands the mechanics of found footage better than most. The camera isn’t just a gimmick—it’s a character. The unsteady handheld work mirrors Aaron’s growing unease, and the static shots linger just long enough to make your skin crawl.
There’s no CGI, no soundtrack, no flashy editing. Just two men, one camera, and a constant sense of dread that builds not through gore, but through awkward silence.
Every pause feels like a trap. Every smile looks like a warning. You start to realize that the real horror isn’t what Josef might do—it’s the creeping suspicion that you’d still finish the job too, because rent’s due.
Craigslist Horror, with a Side of Existential Dread
What makes Creep so effective isn’t the violence (which is sparse until the finale), but the deeply human terror of misplaced trust. Josef is the kind of person you can imagine existing—too weird to be real, yet too real to be fictional.
The film perfectly captures the absurdity of modern vulnerability: how easily we let strangers into our lives, our homes, even our private moments—all because we assume people are basically good. Creep laughs at that assumption, softly, like a man sharpening an axe in another room.
Aaron isn’t just Josef’s victim; he’s ours, too. He’s the stand-in for every person who’s ever ignored a gut feeling because they didn’t want to seem rude.
The Ending: Trust Issues Forever
By the time the ending rolls around, Creep has fully earned its title. Aaron, still trying to give Josef the benefit of the doubt, meets him in a public park to reconcile. He even sets up a camera “just in case.”
Josef approaches from behind and buries an axe in Aaron’s skull.
It’s shocking, but also… inevitable. The whole movie has been a slow-motion car crash of poor boundaries and false empathy. Josef films the aftermath with the tenderness of a proud artist admiring his masterpiece. He even critiques Aaron’s naivety: “He never turned around. Because he believed I was a good person.”
It’s chilling, poetic, and darkly funny—like if Hannibal Lecter ran a YouTube channel.
Then, in the final reveal, Josef shelves Aaron’s murder DVD alongside dozens of others, each labeled with a name. He’s done this before. He’ll do it again. He’s not a monster—he’s just… productive.
The Art of Uncomfortable Horror
What makes Creep brilliant is its restraint. It’s 77 minutes of social anxiety masquerading as a horror film. No music. No flashy scares. Just two men in a cabin, circling each other like a psychological dance number from hell.
It’s horror by way of The Office—if Michael Scott was a murderer and Jim never looked at the camera because he was dead.
There’s humor here, but it’s the kind that makes you laugh and then immediately regret it. Josef’s jump scares are almost slapstick in their absurdity, yet each one chips away at your sense of safety.
“I got you!” he giggles. Yes, Josef, you did—and possibly traumatized me for life.
The Verdict: A Masterclass in Awkward Terror
Creep is the kind of movie that sneaks up on you. It’s unnervingly simple, brutally effective, and weirdly funny. It takes the oldest horror setup—a stranger in a remote cabin—and reinvents it as a meditation on trust, performance, and the art of being profoundly uncomfortable.
Mark Duplass gives the performance of his career as a man whose every smile hides a threat. Patrick Brice proves you don’t need a big budget to create tension—you just need a camera, a psychopath, and an audience that can’t look away.
So yes, this is a positive review—with a side of dark humor and existential dread. Because Creep earns it. It’s terrifying not because it’s supernatural, but because it’s plausible. Because you’ve met someone like Josef. Because maybe, deep down, we all think we’d see the danger coming…
But we wouldn’t.
And that’s why Creep works so well—it doesn’t just get under your skin. It moves in, unpacks, and starts filming a video diary.
