Creature is a tiny little indie horror movie distributed without studio backing that made history. Not the good kind of history, mind you. Released on 1500 screens with little in the way of advertising, the film raked in a measly $331,000 on its opening weekend. That works out to $220 per screen and less than six viewers per showing. This puts Creature in the top ten worst opening weekends ever by some estimates. But hey, I hear it’s doing better than Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star.

Knowing these facts, and having already seen Bucky Larson, I set out to see Creature for myself. Why? I want to be able to say I paid full price to see Creature in a theater. Sure, no one will know what I’m talking about - this isn’t as momentous as saying you saw something like The Room in a theater (by the way, I did) - and even if they did, they wouldn’t care, but it’ll mean something to me. And I am nothing if not an egoist.

Surprisingly enough, this nothing of a movie made it’s way to the local mall multiplex. I would have expected it to land in some piss-ant locally owned place in the middle of nowhere. I appreciate the savings on gas. As I am wont to do, I arrived twenty minutes early for a matinee screening, and as I expected the theater was abandoned. Surely I was the only masochistic idiot dumb and/or crazy enough to see Creature. “Five dollars says I’m all alone for this one,” I tweeted from my phone.

I owe myself five dollars.

Two other people showed up, which fits neatly with the “less than six viewers” average. I was tempted to walk over and ask them why they were doing this to themselves, but then again why was I? Probably the same reasons I saw Bucky Larson: someone has to, and at least I can use the experience to entertain strangers on the internet.

My life is a waste, isn’t it?

I was legitimately flabbergasted that there were trailers before this thing. I mean, it’s self distributed by some random guy, why are studio flicks like 50/50 and  Dream House linked to it? I assume the theater owners did that to lend the film some sense of credibility. A noble failure.

The film itself revolves around a group of generic twentysomethings on a generic road trip to some generic party in Louisiana. Along the way they get lost in the bayou and stop in a gas station that happens to be full of memorabilia relating to Grimley Botine, a local who supposedly mutated into a gator monster roaming the swamp.

Spoiler: he’s real, and he kills the kids. You’re shocked, I’m sure.

Yeah, I know it’s “not professional” to spoil a movie, but I’m not a professional critic. Besides, I didn’t mention the incest! Oh darn, now I really spoiled it. Ah, none of you were going to go see Creature anyway.

If you want my honest opinion, Creature is a very average, competently made and kinda entertaining movie, in that “brain turned off” sort of way. It would have been better off on Syfy or direct-to-video. There are no recognizable people in the cast, unless you count Sid Haig, who I count only in the “Oh yeah, that guy” kind of way, which is exactly the reaction I had every time I saw the trailer - “Oh yeah, that…guy”. I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me, and I didn’t care enough to look it up. I remembered it when someone mentioned it on a message board. “Oh yeah, Sid Haig! What the hell was he in, again?”. I still haven’t bothered to look that up.

The rest of the cast, anonymous though they may be, are serviceable and inoffensive. I wasn’t particularly invested in their lives or deaths on an emotional level. I didn’t care on any other level, come to think of it. Oh well. They die anyway. The monster is well done for such a low-budget affair, with all practical effects and no CGI - how refreshing! In a time when every big budget horror film resorts to CGI for everything, right down to the blood splatter, seeing a film with actual, physical make-up and gore in it is like a breath of fresh air. The makers of Creature should be commended for that. If I have one problem with the monster - and I do - it’s the permanently grinning mouth. That’s a little silly, but the director at least has the sense to keep the creature in the dark most of the time, and even when it is in the light, it’s dim light.

In every technical sense, Creature is a fine film. The photography is professional-looking, the editing is smooth and keeps things going at a good pace, and the writing is never bad enough to call attention to itself. But the movie as a whole never excels beyond being a middling, nothing-new rehash of the same formula that every “monster in the woods” movie follows. It really has no business being on the big screen, but hey - if the producer is so hell bent on losing money, more power to him. This is a rainy day rental kind of movie for everyone else.