Mark Duplass is perhaps best known for playing charming oddballs in low-key fare like Safety Not Guaranteed, but this summer will see him subvert that image in a pretty terrifying way with found-footage frightener Creep.
Starring alongside Patrick Brice, who also directed, Duplass plays an eccentric but seemingly innocuous man named Josef who places an ad in the classified section, offering payment for someone to film him over the course of one day. Josef says that he has terminal brain cancer and that the video will serve as an address to his unborn son, but as the day goes on, and Brice’s character Aaron starts to realize that something is very, very wrong about the whole situation, and particularly about the way Josef is acting.
Though the found-footage genre has been run into the ground thanks to terrible excuses for horror movies like Area 51 and The Devil Inside, the one-two indie punch of Duplass and Brice should make this an interesting, if not entirely innovative blood-curdler. The pic premiered at SXSW this past year, where it earned positive reviews without making too much of a stir. Interestingly, Duplass and Brice have announced plans to make a whole Creep trilogy, so they definitely feel that they’re laying the groundwork for something special in this first installment.
Blumhouse’s BH Tilt, which specializes in unusual release strategies for niche movies, is handling distribution by dropping Creep on iTunes on June 23rd and Netflix on July 14th.