Creep

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In the aptly titled Creep (2004), Franka Potente gets trapped in a subway as a grotesque freak man kills unfortunates that come in contact with him (a junkie couple living in a secret hideway, subway employees in the sewage system, a person Potente’s journalist knows who mistakes a faux advance as a legit proposal for possible sex). Potente spends most of her time trying to avoid the freak, stay alive, and get the fuck out, but this wouldn’t be a horror show without complications. The atmosphere of the subway station and dark, eerie tunnels, the hideous malformed freak man (he screeches and hobbles), and some potent violence make up for moments where characters (like Potente) behave irrationally and stupidly (Potente falling asleep while boozing on small bottles of liquor, missing a clear blade shot to the monster man’s face while he’s pinned down by a subway worker, simply dropping the weapon and running, the subway worker breaking windows and allowing himself to be vulnerable to attack, one of the junkies purposely calling out to monster man in a challenge without knowing where he is) and a lack of real development for the killer (a photograph of a doctor that was perhaps his mentor and father figure is about what we get). The ending is a hoot as Potente understands what it is like to receive change for carrying the appearance of a bum while her night of hell wears itself on her quite vividly. Plenty of bloodletting and body cutting here. The most potent scene to me involved the female junkie locked in a gynecological chair as the freak man decides on how to destroy her (her pleas for help fall on deaf ears; what adds to the tragedy is the fact that the subway worker Potente rescues from a cage checked her vitals and declared her dead!).