The
serial killer now calling himself Aaron (in honor of a recent victim) has
always been somewhat prone to New Agey Deepak Chopra psycho-babble. All that
self-actualization talk makes his murders even scarier. Yet, it also leaves him
weirdly prone to crises of confidence and inspiration, but he always remains extraordinarily
dangerous and unpredictable. America’s talkiest serial killer commences a new
game of cat-and-mouse in Patrick Brice’s Creep
2 (trailer
here), a Blumhouse production, which releases
today on VOD.
Unlike
old, dead videographer Aaron, Sara came to the “Creep’s” house thinking she
would be the one using him. Her thing was Encounters,
a floundering web series, in which she would film meetings with various sad,
strange men who had placed personal ads online. Aaron sounded like a loon,
which would be good for business, but she has no idea how right she is.
Sara
assumes Aaron is full of it when he starts boasting of his many murders, but we
know better. Nevertheless, she finds he preoccupation rather unsettling. He
even shows her the last scene of the previous movie, but she still doesn’t
believe he is the real deal. Of course, she will eventually learn better. She
is in over her head, but Sara is tougher mentally than his typical victims. Plus,
he might not be at the top of his game either—but there is always a good chance
Aaron (formerly Josef) is playing her.
You
have to give Brice and co-screenwriter Mark Duplass credit, because they basically
keep the exact same formula (two strangers video-taping each other in a remote
luxury home), but change-up the particulars substantially enough so that Creep 2 does not feel like a rerun of Creep 1. Obviously, the different gender
dynamics play a significant role.
During
the cringe-inducing Appropriate Behavior,
Desiree Akhavan made us all feel like animals compelled to chew off a leg
because we were caught in that bear-trap of a film. Happily, Creep 2 proves she can do more than American Pie sex jokes for Brooklyn
hipsters. She convincingly portrays Sara as a smart, calculating, and deeply neurotic
character, making her one of the most distinctive potential “final girls” of this
year’s horror movie season.
Just
as he did in the first film, Duplass gleefully chews the scenery, playing “Aaron’s”
sinister gamesmanship to the hilt. Frankly, it is a shame Robin Williams never
had the chance to dig into a darkly manic character like this. Whether it is
real or feigned, Aaron’s bouts of depression give the second go-round an even darker
texture. (It ought to prove how mainstream and pervasive depression is within
society, when it even affects the psycho killer stalking you.) As an added
bonus, indie filmmaker Caveh Zahedi (happily not yet assassinated after the boldly
revealing The Sheik and I) appears
briefly as a previous guest on Encounters.
