I was really, really disappointed with this movie. it started really well, and built up some great atmosphere and suspense, but when it finally got round to revealing the "monster"...it turned out to be just some psycho with skin problems......again. Whoop-de-do. Yet another nutjob movie...like we don't already have enough of them.
To be fair, the "creep" is genuinely unsettling to look at, and the way he moves and the strange sounds he makes are pretty creepy, but I'm sick of renting film like this only to discover that the monster is human, albeit a twisted, demented, freakish one. When I saw all the tell-tale rats early on I was hoping for some kind of freaky rat-monster hybrid thing...it was such a let down when the Creep was revealed.
On top of this, some of the stuff in this movie makes no sense. (Spoiler)
Why the hell does the Creep kill the security Guard? Whats the point, apart from sticking a great honking sign up that says "HI I'm A PSYCHO AND I LIVE DOWN HERE!"? Its stupid, and only seems to happen to prevent Franka Potente's character from getting help.
what the hells he been eating down there? I got the impression he was effectively walled in, and only the unexpected opening into that tunnel section let him loose...so has he been munching rats all that time, and if so why do they hang around him so much? Why is he so damn hard to kill? He's thin, malnourished and not exactly at peak performance...but seems to keep going despite injuries that are equivalent to those that .cripple the non-psycho characters in the film.
The DVD commentary says we are intended to empathise with Creep, but I just find him loathsome. Its an effective enough movie, but it wasted so many opportunities that it makes me sick.