Creep is Britain's answer to the horror creature feature and an exercise in tension, atmosphere and gore. Taking on the horror genre can be a dicey affair. There are a variety of codes and structures that the movie must stay true to, while at the same time establishing itself as fresh and inventive. Many attempts have fallen at the first cliché. With Creep, debuting British writer/director Christopher Smith makes a fair attempt. Similar monster-oriented horror movies like Bubba Ho-Tep have recently enjoyed some success thanks to a combination of good writing and solid scares, held together by skillful direction and great performances. Creep is an admirable and interesting but also flawed entry, ultimately falling somewhere in between Don Coscarelli’s fun flick and second-rate efforts like Jeepers Creepers.

Franka Potente (Lola Rennt, The Bourne Identity) is Kate, a young German socialite who lives in London and likes to spend her time at loud parties with self-indulgent fashionistas. She thinks she's going to a meet-and-greet with George Clooney, but finds herself without a ride to the venue and decides to take the subway instead. Slightly drunk, Kate conks out on the terminal platform, only to wake up later discovering that the place is deserted. The last train has left and the entrances and exits are locked up for the night. Heading back down to the platform, Kate unwittingly boards a mysterious empty train for a nightmarish journey into the merciless labyrinth through the underground, where something or someone is creeping through the tunnels, intent on making sure no one gets out alive.

Director Smith’s willingness to go for broke makes this movie disarmingly entertaining and sympathetic. He fills his movie with subtle, witty touches that turn an everyday location into a paranoid nightmare, adeptly attempting –- but not succeeding on every level –- to avoid clichés with smart writing and inventive direction. The movie feels organic in terms of how real people would behave, although as the story progresses they begin to do the same stupid things all protagonists in stalk-and-slash movies inevitably seem susceptible to. Filmed largely with hand-held cameras, Smith does well to preserve suspense, cleverly holding back any sight of the murderous creature, thus helping to stimulate imagination and feed the fear. Smith shoots his movie cleverly, playing with focus and depth of field to overcome his budget limitations and making the setting look both eerily familiar and terrifying at the same time.

The movie’s first reel is genuinely suspenseful and extremely effective, largely thanks to said familiarity of its location and setup. Smith's screenplay is solidly constructed to deliver well-above-average scares. With a firm boot in the monster and massacre subgenres, Smith riffs intelligently through the staple psychosexual subtext of the heroine in modern horror. This forms as much of Kate's development as it does of her stalker's background. The direction and focus shift mid-point to deliberately accommodate this and from then on the slow build gives way to shocks and adrenaline. The titular creep is actually revealed in the second reel and Smith jettisons suspense in favor of grue and carnage. Once the subtlety flies out the window, the movie becomes darker and a lot more gruesome. Smith pulls out all the stops in the final reel, drenching his audience in blood and entrails without a moment’s respite.

This change of mood is in fact my issue with this movie. I felt like I was watching Jacob’s Ladder’s in the first, Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the second, and Saw in the final reel, with two or three connected plot-threads to keep me from getting lost. Each of them is fine if watched by itself, but pasted together it’s too much of a jolt. It really took me a while to get back into the thick of things once the creep was unveiled, who bears a resemblance to Peter Jackson’s Gollum, and whose lair reminded me of the Phantom Of the Opera. I was invited to shiver at first and feel sick next. Smith is evidently and enthusiastically going for the fright factor, but he gets a carried away at times. There are at least two scenes of gratuitous grue that, while patently executed, add nothing to the narrative. The movie eventually seems to run out of ideas and goes overboard towards the end, with little coincidences and unlikely bits of horror movie business that undermine the clever logic of the movie's first two-thirds.

Cast performances vary from acceptable to good, particularly Potente, who avoids scream queen clichés by making her character surprisingly unlikable, which makes it hard to care for her predicament, but as a bold woman in the movie's patriarchal society she serves the genre well. The other characters are more superficially defined and mainly serve the plot dynamics between Kate and the Creep. A special mention must be made of the movie’s sound design. Minimal and surging in turn, it truly makes the movie work as a shocker. The sound effects are masterful in their creation of humming lights, drips, rattles, breath, crashing doors and screams to create a genuinely creepy environment.

Creep is definitely not going to set the world alight, but it’s a fun way to spend an hour and a half. Similar in tone to the likes of Saw and Wrong Turn, it may not be in the same league with those movies in terms of consistency and overall quality, but it definitely has its moments and it remains an enjoyable little late-night horror flick despite its flaws. It beats Jeepers Creepers, that’s for sure.