Jeepers Creepers | Review

For the latter part of the 90’s, there has been what one could call- the resurgence of the teen-horror genre. Now we can say that the genre has become overly saturated with a bunch of take-your-best-shot-at-making-some-money-out-of-the-pockets-of-young-adults crap horror flicks. It would appear that anything that is remotely different from these identical scream fests could have a chance at grabbing a piece of cake. Jeepers Creepers takes the bogey-man from the woods route mostly inspired by the filmmaking techniques and film style of the cult favourite Texas Chainsaw Massacre, except that the monster in this flick seems like one of your friends in a really bad Halloween costume (the all-too-common trench coat, funky hair and The Fly-like body type.) The film starts off with what I could call some potential, with the kids driving down the very long empty stretch of country road. Creeping up behind them, (not the viewer because of the horrible framing of the shots) is the milk truck from hell. Trish and Darry (what kind of a name is Darry?) are two pathetic teens that commit every act of buffoonery possible. Fresh out of school, this dynamic brother and sister are scared enough times to warrant a case of adult diapers, but quickly forget about their apparent fear, take turns at being the village idiot and evidently have plenty of time to practice their detective skills. Having quickly forgotten about the madman in the milk truck and being driven off the road incident, the two get the bright idea of checking out a human body dumping ground, which can also be referred to as the home of the man who almost tried to kill them.

There are some points that I couldn’t figure out, like how could a town be so unaware of some many missing people and why there is were a couple of dozen uniformed cops loaded up at the local police station. Apparently the town is run by a bunch of idiots who have not yet figured out that there is a monster among them. Rounding out the cast of freaks is a gun-toting grandmother and the town clairvoyant (the latter especially weak in the acting department). Obviously, the film dips into the ridiculous and every attempt at making a scene into high-anticipation or horrifying experience becomes a simple annoyance, thus losing any credibility in which the film is trying so desperately to build. The teens are so annoying that you kind of wish that they would get eaten up and replaced by other kids pitching up a tent in some part of the woods. The monster is unappealing and no poignant history about this thing’s origins is really provided, okay…so he likes to chow down on humans and the legend has it that it goes on his buffet eating trends during only certain parts of the month..but a little more character development his way could have made it a little more interesting and using the “Jeepers Creepers” number reeks in shear stupidity, it simply does not work. The acting is horrible; the dialogue is appalling, especially the constant use of pun shots towards horror movies (getting a little bit boring especially in the teen-horror genre). The unimaginative use of the camera shots leaves the audience without the pleasure of jumping out of their seats, because they can figure out the set-up of almost every shot beforehand. There is nothing done to create any kind of tension, instead there is a lot of bad car-driving and slamming on the brakes and useless gore sequences. With this being a horror film, my main complaint would be that they do absolutely nothing in the scare-me-please-department and as mentioned before the failure to create an original or even an interesting looking monster is just one of the things that make this film a hard sell. If I don’t like the kids then I would have wanted to root for the boogeyman, but he is just as pathetic as they are. Another thing that has been pissing me off as of late, are films that leave a gaping hole in the hopes of creating a possible franchise. What infuriates is that those responsible in the making of such movies do very little in making the first film into the best film possible. Give the film an ending that it deserves and worry about franchising when post-production is almost complete. Unfortunately, for me, Jeepers Creepers was one colossal piece of crap, or at best, an average student film.

Rating 0 stars