Midlands Review of Creek Encounters
Creek Encounters
Directed by Jason Brown
2024
Tricky Pictures
I’ll make no excuses for going into Creek Encounters with a high level of anticipation. I was lucky enough to review Jason Brown’s previous feature, Morris (now known as Ghost Track), which maximised its low budget with clever framing and subtle scares. With it’s far more ambitious plot, I was excited to see how Creek Encounters turned out.
To be honest, Brown has improved some areas but taken a small step back in others. Combining elements of The Faculty (Robert Rodriguez, 1998), The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) and even some of the chemistry-based warfare of Breaking Bad, the budget limitations feel far more detrimental here than they did in Morris.
An alien spaceship crashes outside of Creek High, causing the staff and students to be trapped inside as the government shuts down the local area. When one of the intergalactic spiders from the ship finds its way into the school, it starts turning the humans into alien drones and the survivors are forced to band together to try and battle the attacking force.
There were moments where it felt like Creek Encounters should have perhaps been a 40-minute mini-feature. That’s a difficult thing to suggest, as the market clearly favours full-length films, and Brown has had success on Amazon Prime with Morris and is pitching this film to streaming services as well. However, cutting the runtime back would have allowed him to focus on the tense action sequences without stretching the limited budget to breaking point.
Instead, we have a lot of scenes of the cast discussing the alien invasion. Having brought many of the cast members from Morris over to this, there’s a good chemistry between them but some of these scenes feel like they have been spliced into the film out of order – with characters switching from hysterical to focused and ready for action, and occasionally re-discovering plot points that appeared obvious.
Some tightening of the script would have benefitted this film, as would have playing with the sound design a little more. You can tell that Brown really wants to show the aliens but as he proved with Morris, sometimes just hinting at a presence can have a greater impact.
The cast are good though – especially the younger cast members who throw themselves into the film. They have a great connection with the adult stars, meaning that where the occasional line is flubbed, the cast easily move around it, creating a down-to-earth atmosphere. A special mention should also go to Charlotte Wallis, who is genuinely unsettling as Maxine – the human form of the alien leader.
And Brown still has a real eye for his shots. Some of the fight scenes between the taken-over drones and the survivors are thrilling, with great practical effects – including a disturbing, melted lower face that has more power than some of the CGI effects in the film.
There’s so much talent on show here, and with a larger budget Brown could make an incredible sci-fi movie that does everything he clearly wants to do. Creek Encounters comes so close but has just a few too many limitations placed on it.
★★½
2.5 / 5
Matthew Tilt
Twitter @Matthew_Tilt
