You suck, Josef.

So, fun fact time!

I, Ophelia Crane, am seriously prone to jump scares.

So, like, we can talk all day long about how jump scares are cheap forms of scare tactics in horror movies and nobody really falls for them, blah, blah, blah.

So, yeah, I fall for them. Me. I do. Every time. All the time.

You remember about ten or fifteen years ago when jump scare videos were all the rage online? Well, I had the misfortune of having friends who would send me those damned videos all the time. I’m still pretty pissed about it.

Let me clarify. I like being scared. I don’t like being jump scared. I can tolerate it most times, I mean, that’s kind of a part of most horror movies, but if I’m dealing with a movie that relies on jump scares…well, it’s a little like being tickled for too long. It’s not fun anymore and you kind of want to throw up.

So, This week’s movie. 2014’s Creep. Point number one: It’s a found footage movie, which I am always initially skeptical of. Found footage films are a mixed bag. Most of them range from decent to straight up boring, but sometimes, you run into a pretty good one. This is not one of those times.

So, here’s how Creep breaks down.

Videographer, Aaron, answers a mysterious ad for someone to come out to their house and video tape a portion of their life. The house in question in out in the woods in the middle of nowhere. When he first arrives, there’s no one there. He goes back to his car where (enter jump scare# 1) he’s surprised by his client, Josef.

Josef takes him inside and tells him that he is dying of cancer and his wife is pregnant with their son. He tells him that he wants to videotape a day in his life for his unborn child…then promptly tells him to follow him into the bathroom, where he is going to take a bath. 

Wait. It gets better.

Josef allows Aaron to film him taking a bath, which, while weird, kind of turns into a sweet kind of thing with Josef pretending to bath with his baby son. He, then, goes a little dark and starts to talk about ending it all. He goes beneath the water and stays there for an uncomfortable amount of time. So long, that Aaron goes to check on him and, enter Jump Scare# 2. 

After the bath, Josef shows him around the house and they find a wolf mask (Jump Scare# 3) that he calls “Peachfuzz”. Blah, blah, something about Josef’s childhood, and they’re going for a walk. 

As soon as they’re in the woods, Josef takes off. Aaron, freaked out looks for him and Jump Scare# 4.

So, by this point, Josef starts to get weird…well, weirder, anyway. After scaring him for the fourth time, he says something to the effect of: “See, that’s what it’s like to feel like you’re gonna die. Isn’t it incredible?”

No, Josef. It’s not. And I hate you.

It’s around that point that the movie lost me. Aaron gets faced with several moments where he can just say; “You know what, I’m good. I’m leaving now.” But he doesn’t. He gets talked into having lunch, having a drink, and staying late into the night with this psycho before finding out that Mr. Weird guy is a deeply disturbed individual.



Aaron manages to escape him only to find that Joseph has sent him creepy DVDs to his house. Aaron does not call the cops until a box comes with a DVD with Josef going all “I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan!”, a knife, and a stuffed wolf toy. The cops don’t believe him and he just leaves it at that.

Josef continues to stalk him via DVD and eventually tells him to come out to meet him in a park where they can lay their “feud” to rest. I’m not gonna tell you what happens next…but you’ll pretty much guess the ending by this point.



Perhaps if this was the first found footage or first horror movie I’d ever seen, I might have enjoyed it a little more? The plot was kind of uninspired, though you don’t really notice with all the jump scares.

You might be interested to know that this one rated 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes…which is weird to me because Rotten Tomatoes and I are usually in agreement when it comes to horror films. I guess you can't please everybody.

If you hadn’t guess, I’m giving this a big old raspberry. Let’s give it the old Bronx Cheer, folks!

And if you’re interested, there is a site that counts movie jump scares. Here’s the list for Creep: https://wheresthejump.com/jump-scares-in-creep-2014/

Next week? Cutting Class with Brad M-F’n Pitt. I. Can’t. Wait.