Creep

A mysterious prowler scours London's underground sewers and tube lines, searching for suitable victims. When he finds one, it's not a pretty sight.

Kate (Franka Potente) is our blonde Aryan protagonist, attempting to escape the advances of sleazy colleague, Guy (Jeremy Sheffield), at a work party one night. Making for the tube station, the next thing she knows she has fallen asleep on the train, which is now empty. Well, almost. An unwelcome visitor, or two, appears from beneath the woodwork and all hell breaks loose.

Traumatised by what should have been a quiet journey home, she looks for help and stumbles across a down-and-out junky couple, Jimmy (Paul Rattray) and Mandy (Kelly Scott) and their dog. Hysterical and in shock, Kate is desperate to find the controller of the Underground and Jimmy agrees to help, but this goes horribly wrong when our trusty killer throws another spanner in the works. Without spoiling too much, it is safe to say, that the sewer-surfing murderer is no oil painting. A cross between Gollum and Nosferatu on a bad day, his ghastly visage is a tribute to the talented make-up department.

Creep is a gory bloodbath, with enough macabre incidents of torture to put it up near the video nasty shelf. Not quite in the same league as a recent French schlocker, Haute Tension, there is enough nastiness to keep you on the edge. And yet somehow the tension remains slack. Once you have seen him, too little is left to the imagination and the hideous elements go into overdrive, particularly when we find out what he does with his catches.

Exposing so much of the killer's physical attributes makes you wonder about character and motivation, but writer/director Christopher Smith only hints at his background, opening a can of worms and ultimately leaving too many lingering questions.

Potente does well, managing enough restraint and inner strength to keep the audience from cringing at the usual trademark faux pas of potential female victims. The hallmark of any great horror is never its acting attributes, but its fear factor. Creep measures somewhere in the middle of the scary scale, yet is worth a visit just to gaze into the killer's eye