Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for The Creep Tapes S1E5, “Brandt” (written by Mark Duplass & Patrick Brice and directed by Patrick Brice)
The Creep Tapes S1E5 differs significantly from the previous entries in the series. Rather than beginning with the victim, the episode opens with Kyle (Mark Duplass) singing to himself as he plants axes in a hotel room. He then sits down to begin talking to his own camera about co-dependency until he is interrupted by movement in the body bag behind him. He is surprised to find the Peachfuzz wolf mask inside the bag, and it becomes clear that the co-dependency in question is between him and the Peachfuzz persona. Kyle proceeds to throw the mask out of the door of the room.
The dynamics of all of this are a little difficult to parse and could be really difficult to write about. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to refer to Duplass’s character in this episode as Kyle (in line with how I’ve used his pseudonyms to refer to him in previous episodes), and I’m going to refer to the wolf mask as Peachfuzz (since that’s where the name that is often used for the protagonist of Creep comes from).
I don’t recall anything that previously indicated a split in the central character of the Creep franchise to the extent we see in The Creep Tapes S1E5. Most of the episode consists of a dispute between Kyle and Peachfuzz, which I read as occurring in the character’s mind. Even though we see the mask on the head of another body after Kyle orders PF Chang’s, every indication is that he is alone in that hotel room. We’re either dealing with hallucinations, or the Peachfuzz mask is a supernatural entity. Take your pick.
That kind of ambiguity, along with the hotel room setting, had me thinking about Room 104 throughout the runtime of “Brandt,” though the episode foregoes the opportunity to put the number on the door when we see it as Brandt (Scott Pitts) finally arrives in its closing minutes. I do wonder if Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice thought about doing that.
The central conflict of “Brandt” doesn’t have anything to do with Brandt other than the fact that Brandt is very late to arrive at the hotel room. Rather, Kyle wants to do this murder without Peachfuzz’s help, which angers Peachfuzz.
I’m reading all of this as internal to the psyche of our protagonist, so a play-by-play of the dispute between Kyle and Peachfuzz feels excessive. What’s interesting lies in the thought that the lead character of the Creep franchise views the wolf mask as a person/partner-in-crime. I can’t say I’d ever thought about things that way before, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
When Brandt finally arrives, Peachfuzz has Kyle tied up in the shower. It becomes clear that he’s not really tied up, so if there’s a mystery here, it’s about how the water is being turned on and off. Regardless, Kyle gets out of the tub to answer the door. He tells Brandt to count to three before he comes in, and then, wearing a bathrobe and the wolf mask, throws an ax into Brandt’s face.
However I feel about the rest of the episode, this ending makes it worth it. Kyle and Peachfuzz have apparently reconciled, but that’s not the source of my enjoyment. Rather, it’s in the structure of the episode—how it withholds the victim throughout only to give us a quick murder at the end.
Kyle was excited to get to know Brandt, but in the end he doesn’t, and neither do we. He was too late for that.
