Jeepers Creepers

Jeepers Creepers starts with an incredible first 15 minutes that easily misleads one into thinking they are witnessing a truly special horror movie in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre vein. In this tense and exciting opening, two teenagers travelling down a lonely back-road are almost run off the road by a menacing truck; they later see the truck parked by an old church, and witness its driver throwing what appear to be bodies down a rusty shaft.

But from this point onwards, the film becomes a mess of clichés and bad plot decisions. Instead of driving to the nearest town to get help, the stupid teens decide to investigate the situation themselves. They discover an underground room decorated with the corpses of hundreds of missing people. Now they do what they should've done in the first place—get the hell out of there! But it's too late, and the killer—which turns out to be a supernatural bat-winged creature(!)—is intent on hunting them down.

Salva proves that he is adept at creating suspenseful moments but less capable when putting together a credible script. He introduces some mumbo-jumbo about a psychic who may or may not be able to help the kids, some drivel about the creature feeding for 23 days every 23 years, and ends the film poorly.

Jeepers Creepers definitely had potential, and Salva is obviously not without some talent behind the camera, but the end result is distinctly average.

For all it's worth I thought that Jeepers Creepers was great. A lot of people have critisized this film and just did'nt like it. The only flaw in the film was the reason for them to return to the church where they saw the mysterious man. If that would have been anyone in their right mind they would have drivin as far away as posssable. I thought that Trish should have been knocked out to awaken only to find her brother gone. The only place for her to start looking would have been the church.Other than that the film was a blast. The creature was great and one of the scariest I've seen in a while. Very imagiantive and constantly asking what the hell IS THAT? As in any horror film it is ment to be entertaining. If you watched the whole thing without hitting the eject button then you must have had some intrest in it. Victor has brought back a return to the old style creature feature films that I loved in the day and hope to see him make some more in the future.

When I watched this the first time quite a few years ago, it seemed like it would be a one-off. Now they plan the 3rd one, which is going to come out in 2011. Good or bad, the same director will be at helm, who claimed back then, that he wanted to make sure, that there wouldn't be any sequels. He had it all planned out (a story element would make this "impossible" to happen).

But I'm not going into detail about that, because I thought the movie was genuinely scary and creepy. I have to admit, that I wasn't aware of an obvious reference, that the title might have suggested. If you know it, it won't hit you as hard as myself, when it gets revealed at the end. But still, if you can go through the beginning and bear with it, when it gets pretty action-y towards the end, then you will enjoy it. I know I did. But I can understand, that some people did expect different things from it. I can only speak for myself and say that I liked the fact, that this was made the way it was. It dares to be different and does not give you a bunch of teenagers being hunt down by one guy ... Not to mention, that all this has a very cool conclusion (the main idea if you wanna call it that) in the end.

Putting aside the not terribly good title, this is a most effective horror movie with an urban legend kind of plot. Very natural and realistic performances by the two leads, Justin Long & Gina Philips, help a lot, and the director knows what he is doing. They portray a brother and sister who are on a long drive home at the wrong time. Long is a very likeable fellow to watch and has done a lot of things since this, but I've never liked him better than here. Many very frightening scenes and some are quite cringe worthy. This may sound odd considering the gore involved, but this is a fun movie to watch. However, if you get weak in the knees at horror films, maybe not. Quite a bit above average.

I must say, I was expecting a lot worse from this film. The whole first half is genuinely scary. Although the brother and sister's rivalry was played up just a bit too much, their characters were still a lot more believable than most modern scare films. Their dialogue was especially natural, and didn't contain a single "oh my god, like, did I just totally see, like, an undead demon, or is it just me?" which I praise the writers for (there's only so many times Buffy the Vampire Slayer can say lines like that before I start doing a little slaying of my own). Despite the constant squabbling the kids do, you can still warm up to them enough to feel empathic about their plight. The cinematography was excellent, my favourite scene being the long pan up the side of the church. The music and sound were cued perfectly and conveyed a true sense of fear, anxiety and isolation.

Unfortunately, the second half of the movie really suffers. Like so many other movies, once the killer/monster is revealed the whole thing goes down hill. It goes from relying on X-files-like suspense to bland gore and a cliché monster suit. Top it off with some overacting "we're not taking any crap" police officers and a poorly acted psychic lady and you turn what could have been a gem of a scary movie into a second rate dud. The biggest disappointment was the end. It was horribly tacked on in a desperate attempt at being a shocker.

Other then the whole second half, the only other complaint I have is regarding the DVD. The menus show clips from the movie which essentially run in sequence, and if you pay attention to them, they spoil just about everything. Where they are, what the monster looks like, etc. I haven't bothered to watch the menus all the way through but with any luck they spoil the ending too (but that's not really so bad in this case).