FANTASTIC FEST: ‘The Creep Tapes’ Keeps The Homespun Magic

Creep is hands down the best-found footage horror film (or thriller, depending on which camp you lie in) since The Blair Witch Project, at least when it comes to Western productions. Mark Duplass’s dedication to humor and serial killer dread isn’t just admirable, it’s innovative. That said, after two critically and fan-beloved films, the franchise has moved into television with The Creep Tapes. As Duplass mentioned in the Fantastic Fest Secret Screening Q&A sessions, it came out of a failed attempt at Creep 3.

But that is the only time you can use the word “failed” when discussing The Creep Tapes. As tight sub-30-minute excursions into the titular Creep’s life, the audience experiences his kills and relationship with Peachfuzz through individual episodes. Treated more like vignettes in an anthology, each and every episode screened at the genre festival captured the weirdness that Duplass’s horror creation has become known for with the right bite of thrilling reveals to keep the audience excited.

I would be lying if I said that I was asking for The Creep Tapes. While I would have gladly signed any number of petitions for Creep 3, I was also fine with letting the franchise rest and basking in the shadow it cast over others in the subgenre. When the series was announced for Shudder and AMC, I questioned where it could go. In the first three episodes, it gave us an answer: everywhere.

True to the core of the first two films, The Creep Tapes excels in its small budget and reliance on giving its actors the camera to record the events as they unfold. Despite the production for a major television network, The Creep Tapes maintain their budget glory. There is nothing about the series, at least in the three episodes that we screened, that departs from the pillars of the originals: scamming people, Peachfuzz, and a nice axe to the dome. That said, The Creep Tapes consistently one-ups itself and takes the idea of the Creep’s decaying and co-dependent relationship with Peachfuzz and his mother to its most extreme measures.

Moving from the larger concepts of the series, we have to turn the focus to Duplass himself. A creative in the series, it’s his acting that chills you, excites you, and, honestly, is just plain weird. Duplass is a menacing hot mess, and, of course, a psychopath. His ability to maneuver from an awkward, creepy disaster to an absolutely threatening psychopath is worth applauding—and I did. The balance between traditional humor, black comedy, and the perfect agitation ala Patrick Bateman represents the best rendition of a serial murderer in cinema and in this case, television.

The Creep Tapes push past expectations and give Creep fans exactly what they were asking for by burying it into something new and exciting. Truthfully, television is the best format for the next step in the Creep franchise—or, as Duplass noted, the Creep universe. It allows the series to tackle situational comedy and situational distress in a way that builds out its main character as someone beyond his chilling inclinations. The future is nearly endless when viewed as an anthology series of the lives that Duplass’s Peachfuzz has snuffed out. And man, I want it to be.

The Creep Tapes is an unbeatable piece of genre storytelling that highlights the creativity in self-restraint and outmuscles any and every killer series around it. Director Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass (as both writer and star) are a dynamic duo that uses The Creep Tapes to embody everything I love about genre filmmaking, even if it’s in television format.

The Creep Tapes screened at Fantastic Fest 2024 and will debut on AMC+ and Shudder on November 15, 2024, with new episodes weekly.