#326: Jeepers Creepers

Release Date: August 31st, 2001

Format: Streaming (Amazon Prime)

Written by: Victor Salva

Directed by: Victor Salva

2.5 Stars

I was sort of excited to revisit Jeepers Creepers tonight, which I hadn’t seen since it was in theaters back in 2001. My recollection was that the movie had a killer opening act, then halfway through it transitions to a fun monster movie, before it finally runs out of steam in the last 30 minutes and coasts to a stop.

Essentially I liked it, but also thought I’d probably never watch it again. Then tonight I did (thanks Bry and Benny for hosting).   

Was it the same movie that I remembered 25 years ago?

Yeah, more or less. 

Controversial writer/director Victor Salva (you can Google him if you’d like) starts off with a pretty commendable Duel-meets-Texas Chainsaw Massacre (#73) opening act, with our protagonist siblings Trish (Gina Philips) and Darry (Justin Long) driving through the rural American South on their way home from college, when out of nowhere they are inexplicably chased off the road by a monstrous truck. Later, they see the truck parked by a derelict church and its driver dumping what looks like human bodies down a large pipe in the ground. With familiar misplaced horror logic, the two dummies decide to turn the car around and see just what is in that pipe.              

Salva does well enough with this stuff that you don’t mind that you’ve seen a lot of it before in other movies. 

Later, when he reveals that this is actually a monster movie, I was still onboard. The monster looks pretty good. Does it make sense that a supernatural being that can fly needs to drive around in a truck and pretend to be human? No, not really.

When Salva gets to the third act, that set piece in the police department, his story is on its last legs. Apparently he hit a financial snag mid-production and had to rewrite the film’s ending on the fly. You can tell. We’re bogged down with a murky explanation of the monster’s origins, and the sets get sparser and cheaper looking by the minute. 

It doesn’t spoil the movie, but you can see Salva losing the film’s spirit. 

But that’s okay. The film has made its mark. Ask just about anybody who saw Jeepers Creepers back in 2001 and they’ll mention the film’s great first half hour. They’re not wrong.