I want to review The Creeping in a way that somehow explains why I disliked it, but also gives due credit for what it gets right. While the film didn't work for me as a whole, there were enough individual moments to make me appreciate the effort made by director Jamie Hooper.
Riann Steele plays Anna, a young woman who is going to spend some time caring for her grandmother, Lucy (Jane Lowe). There will also be another carer, Karen (Sophie Thompson), on hand to help, but Anna will still struggle to deal with the various turns in her grandmother's behaviour. She will also struggle when she starts to suspect that something is wrong in the house. There's something there that shouldn't be there, or perhaps she's just spooked by seeing such changes in her grandmother.
Co-written by Hooper and Helen Miles, The Creeping is a supernatural horror grounded in the same real-world horrors of films like The Taking Of Deborah Logan and Relic. There are few things more upsetting than watching a loved one turn into someone completely different, and struggle to keep themselves together as they face losing themselves, piece by piece. The Creeping treats that aspect of the story with due care, but it also does well when the scares start to filter in. Unfortunately, Hooper and Miles cannot keep things tightly intertwined on the way to a disappointingly anti-climactic third act. Some reveals are drawn out for too long, which undermines their impact as viewers get a step ahead of the narrative, and tension starts to dissipate when it should be building, and things just don't come together in a way that is anywhere near as satisfying as it should be.
Steele is decent, if unremarkable, in the main role, and Lowe does well with her portrayal of an old woman who is no longer as compos mentis as she once was. Thompson is also good, as she has been in pretty much every role she's played throughout the decades of her career (even when being horribly abusive to a child during her stint in Eastenders), but it's a shame that Jonathan Nyati and Peter MacQueen aren't given enough time and space to do anything with their paper-thin characters.
Hooper has achieved something impressive here, especially when considering that it's his directorial feature debut. It's just a shame that there's no consistency, which affects the pacing, which ultimately unbalances the whole thing. Individual moments are great, but often all too brief, and I hope to see Hooper do even better with whatever he lines up next. Maybe he can take an extra run at the script to iron out any wrinkles and ensure a more rewarding viewing experience. Or maybe he can just strip things down to a more basic core idea that allows him to focus more on the atmosphere and scares.
I do recommend this one to horror fans, but you have to be patient and willing to see the potential in it while Hooper keeps stumbling and weaving around the intermittent high points.
5/10
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