Overheard coming out of the theatre after Jeepers Creepers ended:
Patron to Usher: That was the worst ending I ever saw. I want my money back!
Usher to Patron: I had exactly the same reaction when I saw it.
The grumblings and shouts of "That's it??" which clamored throughout the auditorium as the end credits rolled suggest that Jeepers Creepers will not be getting much week-two word-of-mouth boost. And while I'm less inclined to shout at the screen than some of my fellow moviegoers, I can see what they were pissed off about: Jeepers Creepers doesn't have a climax so much as a punchline. A dull, predictable, very dark punchline.
Written and directed by convicted pedophile Victor Salva, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola for some unfathomable reason (maybe Salva was holding Coppola's young sons hostage), Jeepers Creepers is somewhat more interesting than your average horror flick, and very peculiar. It starts out well, as two teens driving back from college have a little duel on the road with some madman in a big souped-up truck. The teens are a brother and truly slappable, obnoxious sister played by Justin Long and Gina Phillips. They see the bad man who attacked them on the road dumping bodies down a pipe, so they decide to crawl down the pipe and investigate, despite the obvious likelihood that it will lead to their being hacked and/or slashed.
In the pipe they make a horrifying discovery, and then after a long sojourn at a diner, things start going really apeshit. They are up against a terrifying force of evil, but said terrifying force of evil is so weird and arbitrary that it just seems like a collection of traits cribbed from terrifying forces of evil in other movies.
Kudos to convicted pedophile Salva for not making this one of those "kids witness something terrible and cops don't believe them" frustration fests . . . The cops get involved soon enough, which allows the director to swipe an entire scene from The Terminator. Other cliches run rampant, from the dumb kids doing all the wrong things, to the winking self-reference used in every horror flick made since Scream.
Not terrible all the way through, but ultimately, and particular with that ghoulish, annoying ending, Jeepers Creepers ain't worth a recommend.
