When four snooty gals declare independence from men because of all the wrongs they’ve done to them, perhaps the big question they should ask themselves is what do they have to gain by targeting a less than bright fellow on a social media site called ConnectMeNet? In the movie Creeper, a film that mixes in grindhouse, exploitation and survival horror into one product, the big question is who is stalking and preying on whom?
Writer/Director/Cinematographer Matthew Gunnoe does a very good job in writing a story about the dangers of social media/dating websites designed for supposedly ‘consenting’ adults. It’s not a topic often explored. Although this made-for-video product will require a repeated viewing to get that message, the hints are very sublime. He also takes a poke at all the sinful joys of watching reality television programs.
The viewers will grow to hate the ladies (Rohnja Morrow, Brittany Cardella and Amber Sym.) for their pompous behaviour. One of the greatest challenges any director has is to explain what he envisions for each character, and having wrote the script, he has an imitate knowledge that the performer has to do. Everyone understood him and he captured that feeling of desolation quite well.
The stand out performance from Jerry (Darryl Baldwin), the mute individual who went online hoping to find some friends, is to be commended. To get him to play two different characters, an innocent buffoon and an angry baboon, takes considerable acting talent. Baldwin becomes very menacing in a silent but angry way. There are moments where he perfectly mimics Michael Meyers omnipresence. And because he has a build of a WWE wrestler, that’s easy to pull off. Once when he beefed up some more and donned his military fatigues, he can easily step on the mat to challenge Brock Lesnar. But after what the girls have done to him, what he wants to do is more in the vein of MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch; even much of the dialogue has the feel of belonging to this Claymation product.
The latter half of the film is much more interesting than the first. It’s like watching a Predator marching through the bayou. In this case, the backdrop is the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Even a few of the trick decapitations look smart, like showing a human head in a box. Some of the digital splatter effects, however, were rather campy. If they were more realistic, then it would have added a darker element to the film. But when considering the allusion to Deathmatch, perhaps that was the intent Gunnoe was going for. He was showing just how far people will go to create a whole lot of pain in the name of revenge, and that in itself is scary.
