In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. That’s the best way to approach Creepin’, a low-budget, low-brow horror spoof along the lines of Scary Movie that isn’t “good” so much as it is “not as bad as” 90% of other cheapie, direct-to-video horror films, particularly those of “urban” inclination. It smartly realizes that it’s easier and costs less to be funny than to be scary, so the horror elements are downplayed in favor of sophomoric humor.
Yes, we have fart jokes, crude ethnic and homosexual stereotypes, and cliched characterizations (Cops love donuts! Hilarious!), but as I was watching it, a strange thing happened. In between the eye-rolling, I found myself laughing out loud…three or four times! Maybe my standards have been beaten down by years of shot-on-video junk, maybe I took one too many hits off the pipe, but I sorta kinda more or less enjoyed myself, even thought it’s about 20 minutes too long.
To try to discern a plot in Creepin’ is pointless and painful. The story is a ridiculous excuse for a bunch of skits loosely tied together, if at all. The characters aren’t even consistent: in an early scene, Michael Shaun (playing, er, Michael Shaun) is a reporter, and later he’s a cop moonlighting as an actor — oh, and he occasionally stops the film to become a DJ who delivers the truly dumb “Sixty Seconds in Michael Shaun’s World,” in which he rants about important issues of the day, like hoes, baby daddies and roaches.
Those unfunny moments aside, Creepin’ stands out for its sporadically funny and self-aware script (by writer-director Tim Greene) and a solid cast that understands that pride is checked at the door when it comes to comedy. The bare-bones plot centers on policemen Michael and Maurice chasing after serial killer Mileek (who looks like a stunt double for Keanu Reeves in The Matrix), who in turn is chasing Laura (for whatever reason), who gets help from her friend Hector (Denny Live), who is being investigated by the cops chasing Mileek. When Mileek shows up in the ‘hood, he gets his ass kicked because “black and Latino women don’t play that shit,” so Mileek recruits a black Jamaican serial killer to help, but by the end of the film, Mileek has disappeared and people are referring to the Jamaican as Mileek. Whatever.
As I said, it’s all just a way to throw in any skits and zany characters Greene and company can come up with. Thus, we end up with scenes like Mileek going to the clinic to get a shot for crabs, a talking doll name Shamika, a song called “Your Love Is Like a Two-Piece Dinner,” the astute observation that “Statistics show that there has to be 3.9 white people in this movie in order for it to cross over,” and more than one scene revolving around people performing fellatio on foreign objects. But hey, it’s funnier than White Chicks.
