Nerdly » Frightfest 2022: ‘The Creeping’ Review

02nd Sep2022

Frightfest 2022: ‘The Creeping’ Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Sophie Thompson, Riann Steele, David Horovitch, Jonathan Nyati | Written and Directed by Jamie Hooper

Due to a traumatic childhood experience Anna hasn’t returned home for many years. With her ailing grandmother, Lucy, suffering with worsening symptoms of dementia, Anna finally decides to move home to look after her. Soon after her arrival, strange things begin to happen soon escalating into a nightmarish fight for life against a malevolent presence. She discovers the ordeal is linked to a dark family secret, a tragic past that’s haunted Anna her whole life and Lucy’s fading memories could be the key to solving the mystery and surviving the nightmare…

There’s been a small number of genre films recently – Wyvern Hill, The Curse of Humpty Dumpty – that have dealt with dementia, blurring the lines between what is real and what is the result of a deteriorating mind and The Creeping follows suit. However unlike those aforementioned films, Jamie Hooper’s film makes a fatal mistake – it gives up on blurring the lines and instead dives deep into malevolent ghost story territory. Unfortunately to the detriment of the film.

The Creeping starts out great, opening with a flashback to the relationship between Anna and her father in the 60s – familial relationships being at the core of this tale – before jumping forward to the 80s (so there’s no pesky modern technology to deal with) and following Anna Ashe’s up-ends her life to care for the grandmother. That upheaval obviously has an effect on Anna, especially considering the trauma of losing her father. But that’s not the only trauma Anna’s family have seen – Anna’s grandfather died not long after her mother died giving birth to her! Which means the house has a LOT of memories, good and bad But mostly bad.

And it’s those bad memories that seemingly, in the early part of the film, are haunting Anna and more importantly her grandmother Lucy. Couple that with Lucy’s crumbling mental faculties and the stage is set for some harrowing horror. If Hooper had stuck with how the film played out for it’s first half – Lucy wandering around the house in the middle of the night, sometimes wearing a white sheet (a simple but effective horror trope); Anna finding her grandmother’s home to be frightening of itself in the night WITHOUT having her grandmother strolling around – The Creeping would have been a very effective horror.

Unfortunately Hooper makes what’s happening explicitly paranormal, which ups the horror aspect of the film but at the same time takes away the melodrama of the story. As if to compensate, the film throws racism and incest into the mix; which provides some explanation as to what is happening but somehow feels disjointed in relation to the rest of the film.

Visually The Creeping looks impressive, even more so considering the film’s obvious low-budget, the darkly-lit night time scenes are suitably creepy and the lighting is just as impressive. The CGI may let the conclusion down, looking very much like the early days of the burgeoning technology (again, forgivable for such a low0budget film) but everything else about the direction and the look of the film marks Jamie Hooper as a future talent to watch!