The Creep Tapes
Season 3
Directed by Patrick Brice
Written by Brice & Mark Duplass
★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)
The Creep series, from the two films to the TV series, seems to keep getting better as it gives the serial killer known as Josef, along with a litany of other names, more time to breathe and plenty of time to get weirder. In Season 3 of The Creep Tapes, Mark Duplass’s killer continues to evolve and we keep on getting more glimpses into a psychosexually tortured mind. Josef continues to lure his victims with an ever-expanding array of tactics: he pretends he wants to film a Tommy Lee-Pam Anderson-style video; he poses as a wealthy man about to confess many secrets implicating important people; he scours the streets of NYC for a “special person” with whom to spend a lovely day; and he even goes ‘phrogging.’ We see much stranger moments, too, like Josef wrestling terribly with his relationship to Peachfuzz. And we get a look back into Josef’s past on a fateful night during the 1990s.
What’s so unsettling about the Creep series overall is how average Josef can seem in that he’s vulnerable, filled with anxieties, lonely, seeking connection, and even trying to work on his mental health. Unfortunately he does murder people. The Creep Tapes illustrates how seeking connection is so common in today’s world that even Josef’s strangeness sans murder doesn’t seem to drive people away before it’s simply too late, and, for some reason, we, the audience, keep tuning in every season for more, more, more.
In one episode, Josef reveals a method acting-like way of dealing with the personas he inhabits in order to lure people in and kill them. It’s actually a very tortured process; that is, unless it’s all a performance for each of his victims, which could very well be the case. We see him thrash around and cry as he tells the persona he’s about to leave behind: “But you’ll always be in my heart with the rest of the family.” Not long before this moment, which is wilder than you’d ever imagine, Josef also refers to “the wolves in sheep’s clothing,” a remark that explains him entirely.
“I know what scared people look like…”
Another episode features Josef trying to deal with his complicated relationship to Peachfuzz. We also basically pinpoint, via Josef recounting his relationship with Peachfuzz, the year/day when the wolf first reared its head. This episode features returns to “tubby time” and classic Creep/creepy motifs. The whole thing is a perfect window into Josef’s psychosexual madness. At one point he believes he’s cured of his deep-seated issues, jokingly pretending to call his therapist, and it reveals so much: “I want to have sex with everybody and I want to murder everybody.” The further along The Creep Tapes go, the deeper we dive into this killer’s severely warped psyche.
“I think we all have these wild animals in us.”
What sets Josef and The Creep Tapes, as well as the films, apart from other found footage and other stories about serial killers is that Josef feels like the saddest man in the world. Whereas a lot of serial killers/slashers in horror are traditionally propelled by revenge or hatred, Josef feels driven by a lack of healthy connection and a deep loneliness. Part of Creep/The Creep Tapes feels like Patrick Brice and Duplass daring, challenging the audience to sit through the discomfort that is Josef. At their core, Josef’s anxieties and insecurities are no different than so many other people. But once we get past the cringe of Josef’s needy behaviour and the achingly human pain he’s barely holding in, then comes the murder. The Creep Tapes is an exercise in feeling empathy at one moment and feeling repulsion the next. Horror was never meant to be comfortable; Brice and Duplass recognise that. They also recognise the potential of what it means for the audience to keep getting to know Josef year after year, a man whose complex and complicated psychology is a goldmine of terror. Here’s to another 20 years of The Creep Tapes.
