[CFF ’22] ‘The Creeping’ review: Ghost story packs emotional punch

The Creeping is a good old fashioned ghost story screening at The Chattanooga Film Festival. Anna (Riann Steele) returns home to look after her grandmother (Jane Lowe) who is suffering from dementia. Before long, a dark family secret comes to haunt her – literally. 

The jump scares begin from the cold open and continue regularly. Still, The Creeping moves at a methodical pace. Director Jaime Hooper (who also helped write the story) spends much of the film building the atmosphere. A foreboding air suffocates everything. 

This gives The Creeping a definite feel and allows for few positive moments. Every revelation and moment is filled with sadness or the precursor to scares. It sounds bleak, but it is just part of the established tone.  

The Creeping keeps audiences invested in its mystery. At first, there are the normal ghostly occurrences. Doors close despite there being no one around and jump scares abound. As the plot continues, things become darker. The plot moves away from old school ghost story to straight up horror. It is a shocking twist that leads to some exciting payoffs.

The pace speeds up quite a bit once things start coming together. The laid back style of the film seamlessly adds a sense of urgency. At this point, The Creeping does away with the subtle scares from earlier in the film and becomes something much more terrifying.

Old ghost stories are usually filled with emotion. They deal with loss, longing, and love among other things. Hooper’s film also deals with those same things, but also tackles something not normally seen in these types of films. The Creeping provides a shocking twist that turns the seemingly simply story of a ghost into something much more frightening.

Tickets for the Chattanooga Film Festival are available HERE