Creep isn’t so much a movie as a goof, an 82 minute micro-budget riff on Mark Duplass’s inflated New Age persona (as in seen in the likes of The Mindy Project). Despite assuming a found-footage horror genre, the film isn’t especially scary or suspenseful; despite the title, Duplass’ character, “Joseph”, isn’t so much pathologically creepy as somewhat unnerving, defined by a relentless Cable-Guy-esque intensity: unnerving but hardly terrifying. You’ll spend more of the runtime laughing at the weird, awkward comic energy than jolting from your seat.

The threadbare plot revolves around an apparently cancer-stricken Joseph booking a videographer named Aaron (Patrick Brice – also the film’s director – who’s consistently overshadowed by his co-lead) to record a video diary for Joseph’s unborn son. By about five minutes in you’ll be rightfully sceptical of the existence of both the cancer and the child. There are plenty of opportunities for off-kilter plot twists, but outside of a clever fake-out late in the film, they’re mostly sidestepped for a standard approach to genre fare. Like Aaron, if you go in expecting one thing – say, a chilling horror film – you’ll be disappointed, but if you can accept this as a pseudo-comedy, there’s fun to be had.