Jeepers Creepers:
General Review
 (2001)
review by Red Velvet Kitchen

There are many bad people in the world, some of them even evil. They are here to terrorise, watching your every step with the 'snake-eyes' from Hell, emitting an incessant, sinister deep breath akin to the Devil's asthmatic brother. They want to trick you into their dark ways. None of them are in this film. One however does appear on the front cover, poster and TV spot for the movie Jeepers Creepers proclaiming it as 'The Greatest American Horror Movie of the Past Ten Years'. We pray for his soul. Before you can utter the words 'Scream', 'In', 'The', 'Mouth', 'Of', 'Madness', 'Lost', 'Highway' or even 'Blair' and 'Witch' or wonder just how many visits to the lair of Heid Fleiss you could get from a film journalists salary, save your no doubt wise vitriolic attack. It isn't worth it. The only response this film deserves is laughter. Of the unintentional variety. And don't let the Francis Ford Coppola executive-producing credit tell you otherwise because this is weak stuff. Not 'Jack' shit but not too far off.

As everyone in the world has told you, the opening act of Jeepers Creepers has a neat set-up. This is because the main strength of the film is pushed to the forefront, namely the genuinely genuine chemistry between the leads clashing with the distant rumble of a horror film about to tear their witty little conversations into shreds. XXX and YYY as the brother and sister returning from college for the holidays, are an excellent horror pairing, hitting the correct pitch between wide-eyed naiveté and creeping suspicion. Both inject the film with a sense of urgency that the plodding direction, script which literally disappears after thirty pages and derivative nature don't really merit. They are pleasingly above the average intelligence curve for teen-horror yet dumb enough to make things fun, knowing they shouldn't really investigate a mysterious man tossing cadavers down a shoot, but… This interesting twist on the 'virginal innocents caught meddling in something they shouldn't' creates a particularly strange atmosphere, as if these modern youngsters after taking a wrong turn had strolled into the murky realms of the 1970s horror genre, rather than a barren backlot to the bright lights and concrete walls of the city. The jaundiced lighting gives this place full of rusty farms overgrown with weeds, mysteriously amassed crows and lonely stretches of road an unsettling feel of uneasy nostalgia; the deserted expanse stuffed to the brim with the suggestive, creepy, backward and plain eerie. The decidedly claustrophobic slow-burn to something terrible happening is tinged with a sense of the morbid, particularly during the menacing, lingering shots of the nothingness that the siblings are driving through.

This terrible thing of course, never really happens, and all we get are decently smirk-worthy moments interspersed into a modestly budgeted film which doesn't seem to know its limitations. Rubber monster suits, lots of unintentional hilarity, anticlimactic action scenes, an ending which has half the 'A ha!' factor of a mediocre Twilight Zone rip-off and a desperately unconvincing raison-d'etre ensue. None of which actually do a single bit of service to the taut opening. This frustrating development is a bit like an Olympic diver starting his routine with an impressive somersault before plunging towards the water in a style more reminiscent of Hans Gruber in Die Hard and hitting the pool surface so awkwardly it makes a sound similar to Vin Diesel smacking Robbie Coltrane's derriere with a large haddock. Basically, it helps no-one. Try and convince your local video parlour to rent it to you for a fifth of the price, promising you'll watch the first part and make-up the rest. I can guarantee the contents of your head will be more suitable, entertaining, potent and yes, scary than what actually happens.

The most fun I had here was savagely turning on the film about half-way through, shouting bad language and witticisms at the television screen. I mean, how can one ignore a scene when an excruciatingly contrived fat black psychic woman suddenly appears on the scene and is made to sing 'Jeepers Creepers' as if she's terrified. Or maybe you want to just take the piss out of the number of occasions when characters appear to forget there's a mean monster on the loose and choose to stand around doing very little. Whether you like mocking defenceless films or not, Jeepers Creepers is unlikely to inspire anything other than a few minor yawns and a giggle or two. And these aren't even good little laughs like those that litter such curious anomalies as the 'Leprechaun' series. These are more like, well 'Jack' laughs.

Just when you thought the unmistakable stench of baffling hype had wafted away, we have a sequel to contend with. And if you see a familiar looking guy with perhaps a fake-looking moustache and thick-rimmed glasses telling you its 'The Finest Horror of its Kind for Years' imagine what owning a gun and being insane may have prompted. You have been forewarned.