Creepers
Review by the Fiend of Grue
Sometimes I get short films that are a pleasure to watch and I can easily ramble on and on about how great they were (case in point, The Psychomanteum - read review), but then there are times when it’s hard to review a short film for a myriad of reasons. Whether it’s a case of not being very interesting, not much going on content-wise, it’s just plain awful to sit through or, the worse culprit of them all, its a complete knockoff.
With the short film entitled Creepers, I’m afraid all of those latter explanations apply. Well, it wasn’t completely awful, but it was not very interesting, didn’t contain much content to write about and it was an utter knockoff of a better-known Hollywood production. Shame on the filmmakers for doing it so straight-faced!
Creepers starts off with a man running down the street as chaos ensues all around him. The man‘s name is Thompson (C.J. Johnson, which also serves as producer on this project) and while he’s hightailing it from the rabid maniacs that surround him and are trying to bite him, he sees a woman - who’s screen name is listed as Bridget (Sarah Ashley) in the credits - with a baby that is getting ready to be attacked by a “zombie.” Thompson stops his headlong charge long enough to save the woman and afterwards they escape to a nearby house as the marathon-like zombies approach.
Once they are somewhat barricaded in the house, Thompson and Bridget watch a local news broadcast that is live from a supermarket. There, a SWAT team is shooting and firebombing some of the zombies as an anchorman gives the play-by-play, telling of “something falling from the sky” and “that is when the attacks started.” As the day passes by, the two of them don’t know what to do so they decide to wait it out. The hours soon turn to days and the bite the Bridget took from the zombie is getting worse. With nowhere to turn, paranoia begins to overtake both Thompson and Bridget.
You can probably figure out from this synopsis just what film Creepers steals its meat and potatoes from. If you guessed 28 Days/Weeks Later then you are correct, but sorry, there are no prizes to be handed out for being right…not today. Right from the opening scene it’s easy to tell this is going to be a case of the same old thing that’s already been done a thousand times already but I was hoping that there would at least be some underlying theme, some glimmer of originality to this tired idea. Sadly I was wrong. All Creepers does in it’s 18 minutes of running time is take all of its ideas from other people’s hard work. I’ll even add in that it stole from Mr. Romero, too, because while these zombies do act identical to the speed freaks of 28 Days Later - aside from these zombies having their eyes CGI’ed white - they take some time to actually become one of those rabid monstrosities once bitten, much like Romero’s mythology.
On top of the lack of an original script, there’s just really nothing that happens in this film. Aside from the opening scene of chaos -which lasts maybe 2 minutes - there’s not much more that happens in the film except for the two main characters sitting around in a house not knowing what to do. Not only that, but sound issues with Thompson’s vocal track make it nearly impossible to hear his lines. While Bridget could be heard fine, I found it very hard to hear what Thompson was saying, having to crank the surround sound all the way up.
Despite all of this, not all was a waste with Creepers. The editing was done very well with the scenes going together seamlessly and director Nick Thiel does exhibit some talent behind the camera. Sadly though, the material he was working from looks more like pages discarded from someone else’s script rather than his own.
I’ve said it time and time again, much like a broken record, that I hate to tear down someone’s hard work, especially in the independent scene, but when there is nothing to show for in the department of originality and your product is a sad rehash of something that has already been done to the point of redundancy, I’m sorry, I simply can’t defend it, let alone recommend it. Therefore, Creepers just isn’t worth your time.
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