Peachfuzz is back on our screens with the release of The Creep Tapes season two on Shudder and AMC+. Adapted from Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass' smash hit 2014 found footage film, Creep, and its 2017 sequel, Creep 2, The Creep Tapes delves into the crimes of the mysterious serial killer sometimes known as Josef (Duplass). The first season of the show aired in 2024 and quickly became a hit among horror fans, with a second season being announced shortly after and a third before the latest episodes had even begun streaming.
Before the premiere of season two on November 14, FILMHOUNDS sat back down with Brice after chatting to him about season one last year to get the lowdown on the latest episodes, how we explore more of Josef's lore, season two's impressive list of guest stars, and how the initial success of the show shapes how a second season was approached.
The Creep Tapes season two is finally here, following the success of season one. Was it daunting coming back to the series after receiving such an overwhelmingly positive response to the first?
It was reassuring to have the reaction to the first season that we had. We made season one in a vacuum; in some ways, it was just us making the show on our own before we were picked up by Shudder and AMC. We had a hunch there was an audience for it and that this was what people who were fans of the first movies were going to want to see, but we didn't have confirmation until the entire show was out. It was a great relief that people dug that version of it. People who were maybe itching for a Creep 3 were happy with the fact that they were instead getting a television show. The fact that people were responding to the elements of the show where we were pushing things past the dynamic of the first two movies was a guiding light for us in terms of approaching the second season.
When we spoke about series one ahead of its release last year, you explained that you left yourself breadcrumbs for these episodes. Did anything change with any storylines from then to now?
Things [in season two] were definitely affected by what happened in the first season. You'll see with the second season that there are definite breadcrumbs, and I would say even bigger chunks of bread, related to the first season. It's funny because in the first episode with David Dastmalchian, right off the bat, we have this dynamic of a copycat killer coming into play. Someone who has essentially seen the first movie and is a copycat of that movie. And we're shooting that, and there were definitely moments where Mark and I were looking at each other and saying, “Are we too far up our own butts here? Are we being too meta?” And I think our reassurance was, if you're watching the second season of The Creep Tapes, you've definitely seen everything else before this. Hopefully, we're giving you what you want in terms of being self-referential in a way that's not indulgent, but playful and inclusive. That was our goal with the first episode, and then later on, you'll see in subsequent episodes, we have references to episodes in the first season as well as the movies that sort of both add on to establish lore and also throw some pre-established ideas into the garbage. So you're welcome, and sorry about that.
I loved that we began season one with an incredible monologue with Mark's character when he's holding the axe, and we have the same thing again in season two. What goes into crafting these long speeches and keeping people gripped by them?
Those moments are what we live for when it comes to The Creep Tapes. I don't think a lot of actors can pull them off in the way that Mark does, especially when you're not only being tasked with delivering a monologue that's direct to camera, so we're not seeing anything else, but it's just you. The entire focus of the audience is on Mark's performance. But then there is also the way that we're revealing information within those monologues. We're hopefully going to lead to a moment that ends with “Oh, fuck, there's a twist happening in there.” Especially with that first episode in the first season, where he is delivering this monologue related to this axe, it isn't until the last 30 seconds of it that it's revealed that he's definitely a killer. That was one of those moments where you just can't replicate it. We shot two takes of it, and I think we used the second one. It literally starts snowing outside in the middle of the take – you start to see snowflakes come down from the sky.
We don't cut away. It's an uninterrupted seven-minute take of Mark delivering dialogue directly to the camera. It's super strenuous on Mark. He usually has to sit down in the corner and not talk to any of us for a bit afterwards. But he lives for that too. As much as he is an intuitive actor who's great at improv, making adjustments, and finding naturalism, he's also a very technical actor at the same time, and he likes the idea of having this challenge with physical beats to hit. I'm grateful that's what he loves and lives for because doing that would be maybe one of the scariest things in the world to me.
There's also some amazing special guests this time round. How did you get them involved with the project?
No one has ever auditioned for a guest spot on the show. A lot of times, those are either actors who are friends of ours, or people who we are fans of and have always wanted to work with, and maybe are writing a character for them in the hopes that they will want to work with us at the same time. It's a found footage show, so we don't necessarily want to cast anyone that's too famous or too recognizable, if it takes people out of it. If we're going to do that, it's going to be someone like David Dastmalchian. People know who he is, and he comes with this amazing lineage within the genre, but he's also able to get lost in it. So I think trying to be instinctual with the type of people that we're putting in this is really important, too. I'm just super grateful that someone like him would want to do The Creep Tapes. I met him at the premiere of the first season, and he ended up sitting next to my wife and me. We were watching the show, I think it was the mom episode of the first season, and he leaned over to me and went, “You guys are just fucked up.” And in my head, I went, “Oh, we're casting you.” Three months later, we were up in the woods together in a cabin, making the pilot episode of the second season.
We learn even more about Mark's character in this season than we did in season one, but it's done in a way that keeps it quite ambiguous, and you can't really trust what you're being told. Will there ever be a time we get a hard and fast backstory?
I think both of those things you said are very true. Not to add to the confusion or be cheeky, I think it's fun to have a character who's a pathological liar. Part of the fun of the movies and the show is trying to decipher what's real and what's not. Everything is real to Josef; everything that he says is true to him, but whether it's true or not, in reality, is another situation. We're definitely adding some solid ground in this season. But even then, we're going to be peeling back on some pre-established ideas that you thought were set in stone in the first season. We're going to be dancing around that for a while, or at least as much as our audience tolerates, and then we'll dive into some hard and fast reality at some point, but we're still having fun.
The Creep Tapes season two begins on Shudder and AMC+ on November 14. Season one is available to stream in full now
