Creep (film)

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Creep
Film poster
Directed by	Christopher Smith
Produced by	Jason Newmark Julie Baines
Written by	Christopher Smith
Starring	Andreas Ípasløs Franka Potente Bruce Maus Ken Campbell Sean Harris Vas Blackwood
Distributed by	UK Film Council
Release date(s)	January 28, 2005
Running time	81 minutes
Language	English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Creep (2004) is a British horror film about a woman who is trapped overnight on the London Underground after falling asleep and missing the last train. The film, directed by Christopher Smith, was first shown at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival and was also featured at the London Fright Fest.

The film has been compared to the 1972 film Death Line, also set on the London Underground and featuring a cannibalistic killer. The director himself, who had not seen that film, attributes his inspiration to a scene in An American Werewolf in London set in the London Underground.^[1]

1 Plot
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot

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The film opens with a comic scene involving two sewer workers, Arthur, played by well known London-based comic actor Ken Campbell, and George, played by Vas Blackwood. The scene soon shifts to horror. In the sewers they find a new, unexpected tunnel, and are then attacked.

The focus shifts to a young German woman, Kate (Franka Potente), who eventually finds herself locked in Charing Cross Underground Station on a stopped train, attacked by a would-be rapist who had met her earlier in the evening and become obsessed with her. The central sliding doors of the carriage abruptly open and he is dragged off her, under the train.

Kate runs away in panic and encounters a homeless couple, Jimmy and Mandy, who have made their home in a small room at the station, where they live with their dog, a Jack Russell terrier called Ray. She tells them what has happened and pays Jimmy to go with her. As Kate and Jimmy chat along the way, Jimmy says that whatever attacked Guy might have been the same creature that's been creeping around at night killing homeless people. However, after spotting the look on Kate's face, he dismisses the story, and tells her that he's joking: either he doesn't know that this urban myth is true; or it's true but he doesn't want to frighten Kate. Meanwhile, Mandy, while waiting for Kate and Jimmy to come back, encounters something which makes her shriek with terror.

Kate and Jimmy spot Guy lying on the railway track, bleeding to death. Kate still wants to help him, and pays Jimmy again to lift Guy to safety. Jimmy is less sympathetic, and can't understand how Kate can want to help him. After Guy is pulled up on the platform, Jimmy spots Ray, with blood smeared over his fur. Jimmy is alarmed, as he understands that something must have happened to Mandy. He runs off, leaving Kate alone with Guy. She rings the bell to the office of the supervisor, and tells him that she's locked inside, and that she needs an ambulance for Guy. The supervisor refuses to call anyone unless Kate confirms that. An angry Kate pulls Guy's already dead body into view for the camera. The startled supervisor then discovers a pack of rats inside his office. Then two grey arms come up from behind and slit his throat with a knife. Kate hears his screams and runs back to Jimmy's and Mandy's hideout. Meanwhile, whoever the grey arms belong to drags the bodies of Guy and the supervisor into the railway tunnel. Kate finds a devastated Jimmy whom she first can't make contact with. Then they head off into the tunnel. A train arrives, and the two run out of the way, into a hole in the wall. Jimmy thinks the traindriver might have killed Mandy, and runs into the train with a crowbar to do the same thing to him, after telling Kate to take Ray and go. He finds the driver dead on the floor. Kate continues into the sewer system, but then runs back, into the train. Inside, she sees how the two grey arms come down from the space between two train carts, grab Jimmy's head and lift it up between the carts. Jimmy twitches, then falls down, dead. Kate screams with terror, and runs into the sewers and into some kind of storage room. Whoever killed Guy, the supervisor and Jimmy appears to be following her. The lights go out, and Kate sits down in a corner and puts out her flashlight, terrified, in an attempt to hide from her mysterious stalker. As she turns on the torchlight again, a hideous, deformed, face stares back at her. The face of her stalker is Craig, the "creep", a mentally ill cannibalistic hermit, who lives in the sewage system. Kate screams with terror and everything goes black.

Then we can see Craig, who obviously knows the sewer system, as he goes down to his storage of food, human beings. He keeps them in cages, partly under water. There is George, the sewage worker, who is still alive. Craig pokes at him with a long metal bar that he uses as a spear. George grouchily informs Craig that he's not dead. Kate is there too. Craig must have knocked her unconscious. After Craig has left with a dead body, Kate and George talk to each other between their cages, presenting each other and discuss how they're going to get out of there. Kate swims underneath the cages and manages to get out. Then Craig appears. He wants to get George. Kate sneaks up from behind and stabs Craig in the head with her stiletto heels, which temporarily stuns him. Then she helps George escape the screaming killer, and they run away together, through dark corridors, far away from Craig, and arrive at what seems to be some kind of deserted underground hospital. On a shelf, they can see what appears to be glass jars containing dead, deformed human fetuses. In a chair they find Mandy, whom George declares to be dead. Kate screams out with despair, saying that it's her fault. If she hadn't paid Jimmy to go with her, he could have stayed and protected Mandy. George, afraid that Kate's screams might attract Craig, tells her to be quiet. He says that he's got a daughter, and that he really wants to see her again. They make a hole in a wall of bricks that blocks the door just as Craig appears. While fleeing they hear a scream, and it transpires that Mandy is in fact alive, but Craig, the "creep", is now seemingly performing an abortion on her with a very large, rusty, serrated blade. They arrive at an abandoned station-master's office, which seems to have been transformed into his own personal sleeping quarters. There, they find Ray in a birdcage, and a photograph, showing what appears to be a much younger Craig, standing next to a professor. They are surprised by the adult Craig, who sneaks up on George from behind and bites him. George throws him on the floor and starts punching him. This actually makes Craig speak; he repeats the words that Mandy said just before he killed her as she begged for mercy. Then he gets furious, grabs George's head and impales it on a blade sticking out of the wall. Kate runs in panic, with Craig following. He catches her, but he almost doesn't seem to be interested in killing her anymore. Kate stabs his throat with a hook in the end of a chain. The other end she throws on the track, as a train is approaching. Craig rises from the ground and lifts up a barrel, which he intends to crush Kate's head with. Then the train goes by, dragging away the other end of the chain, leading to the hook getting ripped out, making a huge wound in Craig's throat. Badly injured, he falls to the ground and dies. Kate actually appears to feel sorry for him. Afterwards she finds her way back to Charing Cross Station and Ray runs up on her knee. In the end of the film, a man waiting for a train puts a coin next to her, thinking she is a homeless beggar by the state of her clothes, and she bursts into hysterical giggles and tears.