Hey, isn't that Ruud van Nistelrooy? (Jeepers Creepers (DVD))

Member Name: ben_83

Product:	Jeepers Creepers (DVD)
Date:	08/11/01 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The tension and fear built up in the first half hour is almost unbearable, the direction is sporadically brilliant

Disadvantages: The truck driver isn't very scary once he's been unmasked, the plot is bumbling, Jezelle the psychic is underused, the ending is a tad anticlimactic, the special effects are atrocious

Two university students - Darry Jenner (Justin Long) and his sister Patricia Jenner (Gina Philips) - are driving home for the holidays through an area of deserted countryside when they are almost run off the road by a spooky-looking old truck. Putting it down to the crazed antics of a madman they recommence their journey only to pass a ramshackle old church with a shadowy figure (Jonathan Breck) manhandling body-shaped packages from the back of (yes, you've guessed it) the truck that nearly killed them earlier.

Unfortunately for Darry and Patricia, whoever was unloading this grim cargo saw them gawping as they drove past and jumps back into their truck with a view to ramming them again. This time he is successful, however, and they end up in a field, the madman apparently leaving them to consider what they just saw. After a few minutes of amateur car repair, Darry suggests, in rather a crude set-up for the rest of the film, they go back to investigate the church to see if who or whatever was in those packages is all right.

The first half hour or so of 'Jeepers Creepers' is thoroughly excellent. There is a mystique about the truck, its driver and the church that is unreservedly spine-tingling simply because there are so many unanswered questions. Who or what is the truck driver? Why is he after Darry and Patricia? What is down that pipe outside the church? The scenes in the church basement where Darry gradually discovers more and more terrifying evidence pertaining to what has been going on down there are masterpieces of horror and I defy anyone not to take a sudden breath when he realises what the truck driver has been using for wallpaper.

In fact, that particular scene is just one example of Victor Salva's fine direction throughout 'Jeepers Creepers'. On many an occasion the tension is heightened by clever lighting (the cat woman) or a good camera angle (looking out of the rear window of Patricia's car at the p
olice escort).

Unfortunately, this is where the praise must end. Forty minutes into the film the truck driver is rather disappointingly revealed, answering all the previously unanswered questions and shattering the terrifying enigma surrounding him. The reality of him is a lot less scary than what I had been imagining meaing the rest of the film is unintentionally amusing.

Additionally, there is an ineptitude of production about 'Jeepers Creepers' that has a profound detrimental effect on the film. Little is made of why Darry and Patricia's mother is unhappy and Jezelle (Patricia Belcher), the psychic who predicts what will happen to the Jenners throughout the film, is criminally underused when she is undoubtedly the most interesting character. Also, the ending is rather clumsy. It's almost like a far less subtle version of how 'The Blair Witch Project' concluded: Jezelle makes a prediction as to how one of the characters is going to die which (without wanting to give too much away) sort of comes true. However, the audience never sees what she predicted happening which, considering that the audience would have been waiting for this moment from the time Jezelle predicted it, renders the end of the picture somewhat of an anticlimax.

The vast majority of films these days have at least passable special effects but, when it comes to CGI, make-up and props, 'Jeepers Creepers' is a disappointment to say the least. The bodies that litter the film look like they're made of plastic, the truck driver looks like something out of a fifties B-movie and the scene at the end featuring the moon silhouette is so amateurish it reminds me of 'The Mummy Returns'.

On top of this, 'Jeepers Creepers' suffers from an all too common horror movie affliction: that of the characters being so blindingly stupid that they seem to be doing their best to be killed. Some of the things that Darry and Patricia do in
this film (go back to the church, have a look round the basement, stick around when a policeman has just been decapitated by someone who is has been trying to kill them for the whole duration of the film, etc.) are so utterly retarded that they probably deserve to be brutally murdered. What's more, by their dialogue, the characters seem to know they are in a horror movie so there really is no excuse.

The opening half hour of 'Jeepers Creepers' is of the quality of 'The Sixth Sense' but, unfortunately, the rest is generic teen slasher fare. In hindsight, I would not go and see this film but, for horror aficionados, it might just be worth it for that church basement.

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