Writer-director and CalArts alum Patrick Brice (Film/Video BFA 11) re-teamed with actor-writer-producer Mark Duplass, for “Creep 2,” released last week on all video-on-demand platforms.

A sequel to the pair’s cult horror film “Creep” (2014), “Creep 2” is essentially a two-hander that once again follows the adventures of psychopath and serial killer Aaron (Duplass) and his new prey Sara (Desiree Akhavan). Fans of the first film might remember that Brice not only directed, but also starred opposite Duplass in the original until his character was—spoiler alert—killed off.

Brice has also worked with Duplass on “The Overnight,” which Brice wrote and directed. Mark and his brother Jay Duplass served as executive producers on the film, which starred Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche.

Check out the “Creep 2” trailer [here].

Patrick Brice (from Facebook)

The CalArts 24700 blog published an interview Thursday with Brice about “Creep 2,” his latest projects and his time at CalArts.

24700: Did you and Mark Duplass always have a trilogy in mind for the “Creep” films?
Brice: No. We had no idea we were going to be making sequels when we made the first movie. It was definitely something that we had to reverse engineer once we knew there was a demand for it. When we had sold the first movie, we had sold it as three movies, but that deal ended up falling through. So once we brought it to Netflix and gave it to them, having that requirement of making two other movies went away, which was nice.

I didn’t want to have to create something unless there was a demand for it, too. It felt presumptuous. Thankfully, the movie caught on, especially through Netflix, having access to that many viewers, and it did become this cult thing.

It was really Netflix coming to us and saying, ‘Just so you know, this is one of the most watched horror movies on Netflix. If you guys want to make a sequel, we’ll pay for it, basically.’ We had that in the back of our head, but we didn’t want to make it unless it was something that felt right for us. We actually came up with three or four different versions of potential Creep 2 situations before we landed on the one we eventually shot.

24700: Can you tell me some of the reject [ideas]?
Brice:I can’t [laughs] because some of them are ones we might want to reuse at some point. What I can say is … that it’s a lot different going into a project knowing there’s a set audience. It’s something I never experienced before—so there’s this other voice, while you’re trying to be creative saying, ‘Give us what we want.’ That had to be something that we kind of let influence things, but not overtake things.

The conceit that we eventually landed on was one that not only worked for the form, being a found footage movie and [in the] found footage horror genre. It was one that made us happy and taking things to a new place, creatively.

The tension of the first movie is that you know that this guy is a weirdo, and you know that he’s a liar on some level, but you don’t know whether he’s capable of murder or not. So we answer that question at the end of the movie.

And so going into making a sequel, the biggest challenge associated with that was how to recreate that kind of tension. We couldn’t do the same thing because people already know. Just showing him killing people would not be that exciting. We needed to add some mystery to it so what we came up with was “what if he reveals himself to be a serial killer at the very onset of the movie”?

And then we have a character that we may or may not believe that’s true and has her own personal motivation that’s hopefully justified for her being there the whole time. It’s less of a cat and mouse game that the first movie was, but it’s hopefully more of a tit for tat between two strong characters who are kind of lying to each other.

Read the complete interview [here].