Writing a Scene Analysis: Creep (2014)
One of our goals at What Sleeps Beneath is to make it easier to talk about horror films on a more informed basis. When people ask us why we like watching horror, sometimes it’s difficult to describe the feelings we get beyond the thrill of seeing a terrifying monster or a mutilated corpse. Are we sick? Deranged? Maybe. But we know, even if we can’t quite express it, that there’s something deeper that draws us to these hilariously obscene stories. There’s meaning and comfort behind the gore, and if we hope to convert the skeptics, we ought to be able to show them what we mean.
Apart from reading someone else's opinion about why a given film deserves recognition, I'm not sure we've made much progress in achieving our goal of helping new fans deconstruct their favorite films to develop their own analyses. Thanks to Arran Crawley's excellent contribution "Writing the Feature-Length Ghost Story: Six Observations," I hope we can start closing that gap. Here, though, I want to introduce one of the basic building blocks in a film analyst's arsenal, and one not frequently seen outside of intros to film studies, the scene analysis.
At their core, scene analyses are the product of writing down every observable detail you can find in a sequence or scene and laying it all out in front of you, taking no knowledge of the film for granted. The goal is to help identify information you may have missed the first or second time you watched the scene, while focusing on a more prominent prop or line. Below, I run through an initial analysis of the opening scene of Creep (2014), a found footage game of cat and mouse between a serial killer and a videographer. The found footage aspect in particular makes this a bit of a challenge, because one of the key benefits of a scene analysis is that it allows you to pay more attention to subtler ways the filmmaker communicates with their audience, like camera movement and lighting. In found footage, however, the camera is always part of the scene, almost working as another actor. This article isn’t intended to dissect the film or even this opening scene—I’m more interested in introducing the process that might lead to those deeper revelations later on. So on the other side of the analysis, I only want to touch briefly on a few things that were revealed, and that I could, if I wanted, develop into a stronger thesis later on.
The film opens with a view from a handheld camera, focused in extreme close-up on a man’s face, driving a car. The timestamp on the video reads “03.21.2012.” Blue skies and palms pass by the driver’s side window as the man directs the camera toward the windshield, showing rolling foothills and scrubland—California, maybe? The man explains that he is responding to an ad for “$1,000 for the day, for ‘filming services,’” and that “discretion is appreciated.” He does not know the client. As he talks, the camera stays trained on the scenery, facing either frontward or to the side, but always from within the car and unsteady. There is a cut, after which the camera pans back to the driver, settling at a low angle, as if it were set down in the car’s console.
Patrick Brice as Aaron in Creep (2014). Image courtesy of imdb.com
From this angle, we are given a much better view of the driver/narrator. He is a young (30ish) white man, wearing a button-down flannel shirt and light tan windbreaker. He has thick-rimmed eyeglasses and no noticeable accent. His light brown hair is cleanly cut with a full, but closely trimmed beard. We can see now that he is driving a bright yellow, economy-sized car. He makes a joke about his mystery client being a lonely cougar looking for a handsome boy to come up the hill. The camera, music, and sound effects have so far been entirely diegetic and the light is natural.
Another cut shows a passing town sign for “Crestline, ‘Home of Lake Gregory,’” confirming the location as being near San Bernardino, California. Another series of cuts add brief observations by the driver as he passes a “cute little lake,” and then a “cute little town.” In the next shot, the driver is pulling up to a steep cement drive with a cabin at the top. He comments on the yellow front door and his car squeaks and vibrates as he pulls to a stop. This isn’t overdone for comedic effect—it just sounds like an older car’s normal creaks and groans.
The next shot tracks up the front steps and heavy breathing can be heard. The cameraman knocks on the yellow door and there is no answer. He rings the doorbell to the same effect. Setting the camera on the porch railing, he leans on the railing and attempts to call the client. Here, the frame is divided in two, with the cameraman framed in the center. To his left, the yellow door and brown wood panel siding of the cabin and to the right, tall pine trees and blue sky. He hangs up the phone resignedly, saying, “No answer and no voicemail.” It’s important to note that he does not mention that there is no cell service, avoiding an all-too-common trope in isolated settings.
He takes up the camera again, panning around the porch, revealing that the cabin is closely surrounded by dense forest, though the road is visible. His car sits at the bottom of the hill with roughly 40 to 50 stairs separating the two. The camera pans back and tilts down to the forest floor, settling on a small clearing and a splitting axe sticking vertically in a wide stump. No firewood is seen nearby, though there are some fallen logs. He crash-zooms on the axe—“Hmm.”
Josef (Mark Duplass) meets Aaron in Creep (2014). Image courtesy of imdb.com
The film suddenly cuts to the interior of the car as the driver-side door closes, serving as a slight jump scare. The cameraman looks let down and mildly confused, as if he’s concerned he’s wasted his time making the drive. He pans the camera toward the windshield, revealing two other nearby cabins, each with cars on their parking pads. “I don’t think this guy is showing up,” he laments and begins to pan back to the left. Suddenly a new character shouts, “Hi!” accompanied by a very loud, possibly nondiegetic sound and the new character’s smiling face fills the frame. The new face identifies the cameraman for the first time as Aaron and introduces himself as Josef. He is wearing all black jogging attire and appears overly enthusiastic about their meeting. He tells Aaron that he has a really nice, kind face, before a sharp jump cut shows Josef loudly opening Aaron’s car door, adding a second jump scare in only a few seconds. The sound of the door opening also seems to be nondiegetic, or at least amplified, compared to the rest of the effects in the scene.
Creep is a fantastic film that I’ve seen at least four or five times. But there are still quite a few things that I hadn’t realized or noticed before this analysis, all of which might be worth exploring as their own articles. For one thing, both Aaron’s car and Josef’s door are a bright yellow—not a very common color for either. I wonder if this could be important and whether yellow appears elsewhere in the film. Both the door and car are responsible for Aaron’s entering Josef’s home, and both are necessary to make his escape. Does the color have any connotations of imprisonment or freedom?
Another detail is the fact that Josef has neighbors and that the cabin seems to have reliable cell service. With these apparent avenues of escape available, it’s clear that Josef doesn’t hold Aaron hostage as much as Aaron’s own sense of propriety and refusal to trust his instincts do, potentially making thematic connections to a few other films I’ve covered in the past, namely Who Invited Them and Speak No Evil. It might be time to explore that theme more comprehensively.
The last observation my scene analysis drew out lies in the two jump scares toward the end of the scene. Both relied on sound being used in unexpected ways, especially for a film so rooted in its apparent authenticity. I might watch the film again, looking specifically for ways the filmmakers disorient viewers through sound design. Indeed, not long after this scene closes, Josef is running a bath that sounds more like a cascading waterfall, or disappearing with a supernatural silence into the woods, or singing eerie songs and growling under a wolf mask.
Again, this is far from an exhaustive list, and it’s entirely possible that most threads you pull end up leading nowhere. But writing out a scene analysis can be an excellent way to start looking deeper into a film you think you know well and finding connections that give greater insight into the film as a whole. Even if you don’t intend on chasing the rabbit down its hole, it can be a fun exercise to revisit a favorite scene to use the next time a normie asks what it is you see in all the cheesy lines and bloody goo on screen.
Article written by Ande Thomas
Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.
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