'Jeepers Creepers' has original
plot but lacks horror aspects
 By
Jeff Cantwell
Staff Writer
The sleeper-slasher flick "Jeepers Creepers" was
more painful on my eyes than had I tried to rip them out.
The story follows a brother, Darryl (Justin Long),
and sister, Trish (Gina Phillips), on the way home from college. The
pair stumbles across a monster's lair. They are then hunted by said
monster for the duration of the film.
The monster in question is a mix of the creature
from Steven King's "Wishmaster," the raincoat guy from "I Know What
You Did Last Summer" and the dilophosaurus from "Jurassic Park." Unfortunately,
when the monster comes into full view, he loses all ability to scare
any audience.
Writer-director Victor Salva ("Powder") starts
his film with a tense, slow pace. It harkens back to the old days of
horror films. The suspense is keyed perfectly to the film and, aside
from a corny "we are in a horror movie" line, the film sets itself up
to become one of the rare, few good horror films.
As the movie progresses, and as facts about the
stupid monster are revealed, the film ends up hanging by its own noose.
"Jeepers Creepers" gets stuck in the pratfalls
of the modern horror film, even while breaking some of the clichés
set up by movies such as "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
Salvo seems to have directed his actors to just
stare at the film's horrific events with eyes as wide as possible. The
characters seem to be forced into stupefied states of shock, which is
actually a nice change from the patented scream, but still doesn't work
by reason of sheer stupidity. Who stands around staring when a monster
is slowly ripping apart the person in front of you?
Of all the things wrong with this movie, two stand
out above the rest. First, is the crazy lady, who we will call Miss
Exposition. Miss Exposition handily appears to fill in holes with knowledge
that she doesn't know how she got. "I don't know why I know, I just
do." If a film has to throw in someone like Miss Exposition to fill
in plot holes, there is a serious script problem.
Second, and more importantly, is the stupid song
mentioned in the title. I can't get that song out of my head, and it
serves as a constant reminder to how I loathed this film.
"Jeepers Creepers" is a horror flick that tries
to rise above the bloodied mess that is the recent trend in slasher
films. With a deceptively original ending that fails to be the shock
that it hopes to be, "Creepers" should be cut up and laid to rest.
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