Review of Creep 2 (2017) by Thequietgamer — 24 Oct 2018

Patrick Brice manages to keep the titular creep from suffering the undesirable fate of diminishing returns by upping the amount of dark comedy and having the serial killer go through a midlife crisis. Desiree Akhavan is the perfect foil for Duplass. Playing a character that's used to dealing with eccentric people, she is completely unfazed by his bizarre actions or disturbing revelations and he has no idea what to make of it. She just continues to go along with his hilariously outrageous stunts.

It's amazing to see the first film turned on it's head like this. Instead of trying to go for the same kind of mysterious, unsettling stalker flick as before, Brice rightfully decides to make fun of it's predecessor's more absurd qualities. There's a reason why Akhavan's "Sara" fails to see any danger in the creep (now calling himself "Aaron"). As she continues to push him farther just to see how weird he actually is, the more menacing qualities of his pathological lying start to fade away and you begin to pick up on his goofier qualities. Something that probably would have happened anyways had this sequel tried to once again go for a more serious approach to it's horror.

This means what we've gotten is more of a horror-comedy with a preference for the jokes. The last 30-minutes however are a tense return to form where the danger begins to re-emerge and you start wondering just how much of this was another one of the creep's sick games. Mark Duplass once again gives an incredible performance as, well, a total creep. Delivering what is likely one of the bravest moments of his career relatively early on in the film. A shocking, standout scene that caught me off-guard. Outside of playing it a little too safe with the ending, this movie is the very definition of unpredictable and another example of why Patrick Brice is deserving of our undivided attention at this time. 9.