Both Creep and the recent remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre demonstrate the extent to which gruesomeness has become the standard surrogate for genuine suspense in this genre.
Roger Ebert said of the latter film that it is "vile, ugly and brutal..don't let it kill 98 minutes of your life". Well, it only killed about 60 of mine as I switched on just as the first young hippie was being scrapped for parts.
From what I saw it actually felt more atmospheric than Creep which made ineffective use of its promising location in London's Underground and sewer network. First-time director Christopher Smith decided for some reason to replace the dead glamourous teen formula with a dead unlikeable adult formula, thereby depriving his film of the approbation of shallow end of the market.
