Review: The Creep Tapes: Mark Duplass Is Still the Most Unsettling Man in Horror

You don’t watch The Creep Tapes. You absorb it. Or more accurately, it crawls into your brain like a greasy VHS worm and lays eggs made of dread and awkward laughter.

Following up on Creep (2014) and its equally unsettling sequel Creep 2 (2017), this Shudder original miniseries, helmed again by Patrick Brice and starring Mark Duplass as the terminally bizarre serial killer ‘Peachfuzz’, offers six episodes that expand the mythology while keeping the intimacy, queasiness, and twisted humor that made the original films cult darlings. Now released on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital by Acorn Media International, The Creep Tapes: Season One proves that you can turn a minimalist concept into a deeply psychological horror anthology with nothing but a camera, a killer, and an unsettling smile.

The Art of the Awkward Kill

If you’re new to the Creep franchise, here’s the elevator pitch: a socially awkward but deceptively cunning man lures victims under false pretenses, typically involving a Craigslist ad, a camera, and some increasingly bizarre requests, before things turn… well, lethal. But what sets Peachfuzz apart from your average slasher baddie is his mix of vulnerability and volatility. He’s not just creepy. He’s recognizably human, and that’s the real horror.

Season One of The Creep Tapes expands the cinematic world by offering six standalone found-footage nightmares, each framed as a recovered tape from Peachfuzz’s ever-growing murder mixtape collection. From the first episode, where a naive filmmaker is hired to shoot a “film school application” that spirals into performance art snuff, to later episodes involving injured skydivers, fake priests, and obsessive documentarians, the series showcases Duplass’s range as a master manipulator of tone. One minute he’s dancing in a wolf mask to a made-up lullaby, the next he’s delivering monologues that feel like half Ted Talk, half cult indoctrination.

Episode 5 gives us the most psychological meat: a fractured dive into the multiple identities (or delusions?) that drive Peachfuzz. He talks to mirrors. He talks to you. And just maybe, he talks to himself in a way that starts to crack the already-thin fourth wall. It’s one of the most unnerving episodes of the series and cleverly tees up the finale, which leans into origin-story territory without over-explaining the mystery. Duplass has always been scary not because of what we know about Peachfuzz, but in spite of what we don’t.

Mental Illness, Horror, and the Myth of the ‘Harmless Weirdo’

While it would be easy to reduce Peachfuzz to another quirky killer trope, Duplass (both in performance and production) has always danced a more delicate line with the character. The Creep films, and now the Tapes, aren’t just horror stories. They’re meditations on how we interpret strangeness, how we avoid confrontation in the face of danger, and how mental illness can be misread, misunderstood, or weaponized.

Peachfuzz isn’t a traditional horror villain. He’s the kind of guy you’d smile politely at during a weird conversation, only to later realize you should’ve run. The brilliance of the Duplass approach is his ability to mine horror from vulnerability, not brute force. His killers are, in essence, case studies in how unchecked loneliness can rot into something unrecognizable. That lonliness often manifests into aberrant behavior or even worse forces us to hang out with people we know are bad for us. Lonliness comes for us all and it often wears a wolf’s head.

That’s not just interpretation, either. Duplass has long been a vocal advocate for mental health awareness in the arts, and his work often reflects an empathy for those struggling on the fringes, whether they’re misunderstood artists, awkward loners, or in this case, deeply fractured individuals. There’s always an emotional undercurrent, however dark. Peachfuzz may be evil, but he’s not without pathos, and that complexity makes him more terrifying than any masked slasher.

A Found Footage Format That Still Works

Let’s be honest, found footage horror is a dicey proposition in 2025. The golden age has passed, and for every Lake Mungo, there are ten unwatchable GoPro ghost hunts. But The Creep Tapes gets it right by leaning into what the format does best: create tension through intimacy, implication, and awkward silences.

This isn’t a shaky-cam screamfest. It’s voyeuristic slow-burn terror that rewards attention. Much like the original Creep, the real scares come from watching someone be manipulated in real time. The camera doesn’t need to blinkbe, cause the horror never does.

Special features include a Shudder-hosted Q&A with Duplass and Brice, as well as commentary tracks that give valuable insight into how they balance improv, scripting, and real-time tension-building. For fans of the original films, it’s essential material.

The Final Word

At six episodes and a lean 180 minutes, The Creep Tapes: Season One doesn’t overstay its welcome. Instead, it quietly worms its way into your psyche, and lingers like an uncomfortable memory. It’s darkly funny, deeply weird, and still has the power to make you question the strange guy who asked you to take his picture at the park.

By expanding the universe without abandoning its claustrophobic roots, Duplass and Brice have done the near impossible: made found footage feel fresh again. And if Peachfuzz is still out there, somewhere between personalities, disguises, and mini-DV tapes, we’re weirdly okay with him returning. Just don’t let him in the house.

Rating: ★★★★½
The Creep Tapes is available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital now.

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