# Creepy (クリーピー 偽りの隣人)
**Creepy** (クリーピー 偽りの隣人, *Kurīpī: Itsuwari no Rinjin*, "Creepy: False Neighbors") is a 2016 Japanese suspense thriller directed by [Kiyoshi Kurosawa](https://www.edgepedia.org/kiyoshi-kurosawa), adapted from Yutaka Maekawa's novel *Creepy*, which won the 15th Japan Mystery Literature Award for new writers. It follows a former detective and criminal psychologist, Koichi Takakura, who is drawn into analyzing a six-year-old missing-family case while he and his wife grow uneasy about the strange family next door.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / screenwriters | Kiyoshi Kurosawa; screenplay by Kurosawa and Chihiro Ikeda[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/) |
| Source | Novel *Creepy* by Yutaka Maekawa (Kobunsha), winner of the 15th Japan Mystery Literature Award for new writers[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/) |
| Japanese release | June 18, 2016; 130 minutes; distributed by Shochiku and Asmik Ace[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/) |
| Festival premiere | 66th Berlin International Film Festival, February 13, 2016[2](https://eprints.undip.ac.id/75742/1/1._SKRIPSI_FULL_TANIA_MARBUN.pdf) |
| Principal cast | Hidetoshi Nishijima, Yūko Takeuchi, Teruyuki Kagawa, Haruna Kawaguchi, Masahiro Higashide, Ryōko Fujino[3](https://eiga.com/movie/82611/) |
| Critical scores | 91% Tomatometer (53 reviews) and 58% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; Metascore 76 on Metacritic[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/creepy_2016) • [5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4900708/criticreviews/) |
| Music / cinematography | Yūri Habuka; Akiko Ashizawa (JSC)[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Koichi Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a criminal psychologist and former police detective. A detective named Nogami ([Masahiro Higashide](https://www.edgepedia.org/masahiro-higashide)) asks him to analyze the disappearance of an entire family six years earlier; the sole survivor, the eldest daughter Saki (Haruna Kawaguchi), cannot supply the memory that would reach the case's core.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/) Meanwhile Takakura and his wife Yasuko (Yūko Takeuchi) have recently moved into a new home, and the neighboring family is odd: the head of the household, Masayoshi Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa), lives with a sickly wife and a middle-school daughter, Mio (Ryōko Fujino). Casual conversations with Nishino leave the couple unsettled, and one day a remark from Mio shocks Takakura.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/) As suspicion of the neighbor grows, the couple is pulled into deep darkness.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/)
The film opens with a scene in which Takakura, then an active profiler of serial killers, misjudges a suspect in custody, an incident that forces him onto a sabbatical and into the move to a country home.[6](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/creepy-2016)
## Production and adaptation
Kurosawa came to the project when a producer brought him Maekawa's novel. Because the book was very long, he said, filming all of it was difficult, and he used its first half as a source of ideas; the finished film departs substantially from the novel, and the critic Yasuhiro Fujisaki notes that the film and the original differ greatly from the story's opening and even in the protagonist's setup.[7](https://www.cinematoday.jp/news/N0082547) • [8](https://realsound.jp/movie/2016/02/post-1038.html) Kurosawa co-wrote the screenplay with Chihiro Ikeda, who had made her feature debut with *The Woman on the Southeast Corner Room on the Second Floor*; Ikeda spent nearly a year developing the plot, and Kurosawa recalled that building a new story on the basis of the novel was hard work.[3](https://eiga.com/movie/82611/) • [7](https://www.cinematoday.jp/news/N0082547)
Kurosawa arrived at the film after *Journey to the Shore* (2015), which won him the Un Certain Regard directing award at Cannes; reviewers noted that he was returning to the suspense register of earlier work such as *Cure* (1997) and *Pulse* after that supernatural romance.[9](https://www.justwatch.com/jp/%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB/kuripi) • [10](https://www.timeout.com/movies/creepy) The film premiered at the 66th [Berlin International Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/berlin-international-film-festival) on February 13, 2016, before opening in Japan on June 18, 2016.[2](https://eprints.undip.ac.id/75742/1/1._SKRIPSI_FULL_TANIA_MARBUN.pdf) • [1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/)
## Reception
**Critical response was strongly positive.** On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 91% Tomatometer from 53 reviews against a 58% audience Popcornmeter, with the critics consensus calling it "a suspenseful and thoroughly unsettling... blend of crime procedural and domestic drama".[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/creepy_2016) Metacritic recorded a Metascore of 76 from 13 reviews.[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4900708/criticreviews/)
Reviewers singled out Kurosawa's slow-building method. The *Village Voice* described his technique as "the opposite of a jump scare", revealing upsetting details with slow-build subtlety, and the *Los Angeles Times* noted his use of silence as a tool of terror in long, too-quiet scenes.[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4900708/criticreviews/) Manohla Dargis of *The New York Times* wrote that the film works as horror while also carrying the conundrums of a detective story, the emotional currents of a domestic drama, and the pulse of a psychological thriller.[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4900708/criticreviews/) Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com praised the filmmaking and Kagawa's performance, which "teeters on that edge between Horror Movie Bad Guy and Misunderstood Loner", while finding Yasuko underdeveloped.[6](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/creepy-2016) Time Out gave three of five stars, judging the film slick, well-acted and cruelly funny in its picking at Japanese social etiquette, though short of the intensity of *Cape Fear* or *Audition*.[10](https://www.timeout.com/movies/creepy)
Japanese critics responded in kind. The writer and filmmaker Ōtsuichi called the film a masterpiece of suspense, praising the completeness of Kagawa's neighbor, and the critic Yasuhiro Fujisaki compared Nishino's manipulative talk to the speech of the murder-suggestion figure in Kurosawa's *Cure*, a variation on a technique that strips the other person of the meaning of answering.[11](https://movies.shochiku.co.jp/100th/kuripi/) • [12](https://webronza.asahi.com/culture/articles/2016082300002.html) MovieScore lists a worldwide box office of $5,048,679.[13](https://www.moviescore.com/movie/creepy-%282016%29)
## Place in Kurosawa's work
The film sits in the line of Kurosawa's thrillers about menace inside ordinary life, from *Cure* (1997) onward, and its subject is a figure the director has returned to repeatedly: the psychopath in a mundane setting. Reviewers describe its method as accumulating quiet wrongness rather than overt shocks; the film's horror comes from a neighbor next door rather than a haunted object, and from the way Nishino's conversation gradually derails the couple's domestic rhythm.[6](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/creepy-2016) • [12](https://webronza.asahi.com/culture/articles/2016082300002.html) Kurosawa continued in this register afterward, winning the Silver Lion at the 2020 [Venice Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/venice-film-festival) for *Wife of a Spy*, and he remains known internationally as a master of horror whose films let long stretches pass before anything frightening occurs.[14](https://apnews.com/article/4f924fab09a3999610e37a66c382f619)
## References
1. [『クリーピー 偽りの隣人』作品データベース, 松竹](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/04872/)
2. [Tania Marbun, "Analisis Karakter Abnormal Nishino dalam Film Creepy Karya Kiyoshi Kurosawa", Universitas Diponegoro](https://eprints.undip.ac.id/75742/1/1._SKRIPSI_FULL_TANIA_MARBUN.pdf)
3. [クリーピー 偽りの隣人 : 作品情報・キャスト・あらすじ, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/82611/)
4. [Creepy (2016), Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/creepy_2016)
5. [Creepy (2016) Metacritic reviews, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4900708/criticreviews/)
6. [Brian Tallerico, "Creepy", RogerEbert.com, October 21, 2016](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/creepy-2016)
7. [『クリーピー』の黒沢清監督が明かす、原作ものの醍醐味とは？, シネマトゥデイ, May 9, 2016](https://www.cinematoday.jp/news/N0082547)
8. [西島秀俊も香川照之も昔はこの風景の中にいた, Real Sound, February 2016](https://realsound.jp/movie/2016/02/post-1038.html)
9. [クリーピー 偽りの隣人, JustWatch Japan](https://www.justwatch.com/jp/%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB/kuripi)
10. [Tom Huddleston, "Creepy 2016, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa", Time Out, November 21, 2016](https://www.timeout.com/movies/creepy)
11. [クリーピー 偽りの隣人, 松竹映画100年の100選](https://movies.shochiku.co.jp/100th/kuripi/)
12. [藤崎康, 必見！黒沢清『クリーピー 偽りの隣人』(上), 朝日新聞論座, August 24, 2016](https://webronza.asahi.com/culture/articles/2016082300002.html)
13. [Creepy (2016), MovieScore](https://www.moviescore.com/movie/creepy-%282016%29)
14. [Yuri Kageyama, "Japan's horror master Kurosawa's first samurai film arrives at US theaters", Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/4f924fab09a3999610e37a66c382f619)
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