Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for The Creep Tapes S1E4, “Brad” (written by Mark Duplass & Patrick Brice and directed by Patrick Brice)
Brad Branson (Josh Ruben) made a film some 20 years ago called The Man, the Boy, and the Gun. This is not a film that exists in the real world, and we only see the title in The Creep Tapes S1E4 on a DVD that we are told is completely unofficial, so I guess I don’t know if that title should have commas in it or not. Sometimes film titles violate grammar in egregious ways.
I know what you’re thinking: That doesn’t matter. And, of course, you’re right about that, but one of the things I’ve always enjoyed in the Creep franchise is how our serial killer friend will make references to the history of cinema. We don’t know a lot about who this guy really is, but we know he’s a film buff. Here, he tells Brad about how he was looking to watch an indie comedy starring Parker Posey one night two decades ago when he stumbled upon Brad’s brilliant film.
Mark Duplass’s character doesn’t give a name to himself in this episode, so I suppose I’ll go ahead and call him Peachfuzz. Brad finds him playing the piano, but he quickly breaks into a Brad Branson fanboy schtick when he sees that Brad has arrived. He gushes about the music in Brad’s film, which he knows Brad wrote. That uncle doesn’t exist; it’s an anagram. It appears he’s right about this. At least, Brad doesn’t tell him that he’s wrong.
So, is Peachfuzz pretending to be a fan of Brad’s work, or is he really a fan? My vote is for the latter. I think he’s thrilled to have sucked in this filmmaker whose work he admires, and thinks of himself as a filmmaker. Of course, the opposite could be true in terms of Peachfuzz’s estimation of Brad’s work. Sticking to The Creep Tapes, I think he did have some real admiration for Elliot’s (David Nordstrom) birding, but surely he thought Jeremy (Josh Fadem) was a talentless sellout.
Regardless, the conceit in “Brad” tickles me. Peachfuzz wants Brad to work with him on a new true crime documentary, and, no, he doesn’t have a deck or a keynote. What he has is a dead body on the floor of a bedroom.
Brad retches when he sees it, and we can only imagine, or infer, what goes through his mind as Peachfuzz tells him that he’s free to call the cops if he doesn’t want to make the film. It could be that Brad is afraid—that would be fair—or it could be that he is excited by the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and knows that he could always claim fear later. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
Peachfuzz is already digging a grave when Brad finds him to tell him he’s onboard to make the film. Realizing this would have been good footage, he starts filling the hole back up, but Brad insists that he’s old school and there can’t be any staging. Peachfuzz and I respect that.
Now, there’s the question of getting the dead body to the shallow grave. As Peachfuzz pulls it on a sheet, he gives Brad the opportunity to ask any yes or no question he likes, except for whether Peachfuzz is the killer. Brad asks that pretty quickly anyway, but Peachfuzz brushes it off as an attempt to read his body language. I’ll admit I do kind of wish Brad had asked more questions before this cut things off, but so it goes.
Peachfuzz pretends to throw out his back as he’s dragging the body and convinces Brad to help him. They get the body to the grave, at which point Peachfuzz says he has to attend to some things inside, giving Brad an opportunity to inspect the corpse. He finds a heart-shaped locket, which has a picture of the wolf mask inside of it, before Peachfuzz startles him by offering to help.
After another feigned back issue, which leads to Brad walking on Peachfuzz’s back, Brad decides to insist that Peachfuzz is the killer. He’s the only one who could have done it, and Brad insists on that even as he’s told that he only gets one guess. Then, Peachfuzz runs back into the house.
Brad decides that this is the time to run away. He gets to his car, but as he backs it up, he hears a thump. It’s another body, but we should note (as Peachfuzz does later) that Brad could have just kept going anyway.
He doesn’t. Instead, he helps to drag this second body to the grave, at which point he’s given another opportunity to guess what happened. The second body is wearing the wolf mask, so Brad guesses that this little guy killed the big guy. He’s not willing to make that his final answer, though, which is good because he was wrong.
Next thing we know, though, Brad either tries to attack or get past Peachfuzz, which causes the latter to hit him with a shovel.
Brad awakes in a chair, and Peachfuzz shows him footage of the day’s events that makes it look like Brad is the killer. In fact, he insists that Brad is the killer, which raises a bit of a question with regard to the two corpses. The easy answer is that Peachfuzz killed them, but it’s fun to consider other possibilities. He insisted that he didn’t kill the first one, after all.
Regardless, Brad throws his chair at Peachfuzz and tries to escape, but he’s quickly caught and killed with a shovel offscreen. It’s not The Jinx, but Peachfuzz ends things with a burp.
See you next week.
