Creep

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Creep is a British-German horror movie set within the London Underground, starring Franka Potente and Sean Harris.

Kate, a young, snooty socialite, ends up getting trapped in the underground after missing the last train. During a sexual assault she meets Creep, aka Craig, a malformed, extremely strong psychopath who goes to extreme lengths to hunt her down. Eventually she does get caught, but she escapes and learns some clues about Craig's past before becoming the Final Girl.

The movie is a classic horror movie playing on our fear of the dark, enclosed spaces and ugly balding people with knives.

Tropes used in Creep include:
  • Abandoned Hospital
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Justified and played straight. The maintenance tunnels underneath the subway are accessible to humans, and the tunnels closer to the Abandoned Hospital are not specifically meant to exist -- given that the hospital is an underground abortion clinic hidden in the subway. Played straight with the sewers in the opening.
  • Asshole Victim: Guy and the Security Supervisor.
    • Arguably Kate herself (even though she doesn't actually die).
"Franka Potente’s performance is excellent, and in the interviews on the DVD, she shows that she’s clearly put a lot of thought into how she went about portraying Kate – but it’s really jarring to have such a bitch as the main character."
—Critical Dave
  • Attempted Rape
  • Atomic F-Bomb: Jimmy, after Mandy is taken.
  • Bald of Evil: Creep.
  • Black Dude Dies First: Subverted. George is one of the first characters to appear, and he ends up surviving a lot of the film - until he ends up as Craig's final victim. The director's commentary mentions that George's actor was fully expecting to have his character die within ten pages of the script because of this trope, but was pleasantly surprised when he found out that wasn't the case.
  • Bloody Handprint: The DVD cover features one on a train window. Also used in the film, when Creep smears his blood-soaked hand over the security monitor.
  • Break the Cutie: Kate (with shades of Break the Haughty) and Mandy.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Kate's shoes. (Well, one of them.)
  • Darkness Equals Death
  • Death by Sex: Well okay, it was death by rape, but that works, doesn't it?
  • Downer Ending: Kate and Ray (the dog) both survive, but all the other major characters have been horribly killed and Kate is completely traumatised by everything that's happened.
  • Eye Scream: All over the place. The first corpse seen (that of one of the train drivers) has a piece of metal driven through his eye, Kate drives her stiletto heel through Creep's eye, and, in their final confrontation, Creep shoves his thumbs into George's eye sockets.
  • Facial Horror: Jimmy's fate.
  • Final Girl
  • Fingore: One of Kate's fingernails becomes badly damaged, and she starts pulling parts of it off when she notices the damage.
  • Gorn
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Subverted twice, brutally:
    • When Creep slits the Security Supervisor's throat, the camera cuts away to focus on Kate just as he starts doing it - only for it to cut back again to show the full, gory result.
    • When Creep is killing Mandy, the camera cuts away just as he stabs her in the groin with a saw... and then we return to him later, still sawing away at her corpse. The viewer doesn't actually get to see the corpse as he's doing it... but, taking into account the grisly noises combined with blood splattering all over Creep as he hacks into the corpse, you don't need to see it to be horrified.
  • Groin Attack: A rare female example, as Mandy is stabbed in between her legs with a surgical saw.
  • The Grotesque: Creep.
  • Hello
  • Heroic BSOD: Kate. After escaping from her ordeal, she just sits silently on the platform, staring into space.
  • Hope Spot: A particularly brutal one. When Mandy starts stirring, revealing that she's still alive (although just barely), it seems that Kate might just turn around and notice her... but she never does.
  • Implacable Man: Creep.
  • It's Personal: After Mandy is taken and presumed dead, Jimmy personally decides to go after Creep himself, despite knowing he'll probably die in the process.
  • Jump Scare: Several, but none are more jarring than the first full appearance of Creep.
  • Kill the Cutie: Mandy.
  • Laughing Mad: At the end, Kate starts to giggle uncontrollably after she's mistaken for a homeless person during her Heroic BSOD. Her giggling quickly dissolves into sobs after everything that's happened hits her all at once.
  • The London Underground
  • Matchlight Danger Revelation: Used with torches, twice. Happens at the very beginning when Arthur shines his torch around and sees Creep for a split second, and later with Kate when Creep is fully seen for the very first time.
  • Meaningful Background Event: After Kate believes Mandy to be dead, the camera shows Mandy, in the background, still very much alive, trying to get Kate and George's attention. Unfortunately, she's so weak she can barely move, let alone speak.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: A lot of the film is utterly quiet, save for a very creepy ambient soundtrack reminiscent of Silent Hill.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Creep has shades of this.
  • Rule of Scary
  • Say My Name: "MANDY!!"
    • "Jimmy... Jimmy... Jimmy... Jimmy..." Made even more horrifying when Creep repeats it to Kate and George later on.
  • Slashed Throat: How the Security Supervisor meets his end, although it isn't a clean slash - his neck is viciously hacked into. Creep himself also meets his end in this way.
  • Slasher Movie
  • Team Pet: Ray the dog.
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