Just the Ticket #117: Jeepers Creepers
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster
Happy Halloween, Ticketholders!
My last attempt at this sort of special (the weekly Chucky coverage debacle of last year) didn't go so well. So this year, I decided to watch all four films in the Jeepers Creepers franchise (the equivalent runtime to the entire first season of Chucky) in one week and write a series review with a hard deadline because I am smart and always treat myself with the utmost care and respect....
I also did a daily review countdown to Halloween (which was also the hundred issue milestone of Just the Ticket) back in 2015. But that was seven years ago because math, so I was younger, and I had more of a review backlog to draw from, meaning I wasn't creating as much new content as I am having to do now.
Check this link for my past Halloween special efforts.
Of course, the inherent issue with this...issue you are about to read has to do with the original trilogy's controversial director, if that controversy should be allowed to color my opinions of the films themselves, and whether those opinions should be seen as supportive of such a person (especially in light of my recent Bill Murray commentary).
Victor Salva, the director in question, was convicted and sentenced for the 1988 sexual assault of the twelve-year-old lead in his debut film, Clownhouse (in which Poltergeist's Sam Rockwell made his acting debut), as well as possession of child pornography. Salva served fifteen months of his three-year sentence, and completed parole in 1992 before returning to directing in 1995 with Nature Of the Beast and Powder. Salva's reputation has preceded him to the tune of several organized boycotts (which, ironically, sounds like somewhere a pedophile would sleep) of his films.
I do not condone pedophilia. It's wrong and creepy, and despite a certain Louis CK monologue, I do not understand its depraved appeal, nor do I care to. I even find Salva's alleged, underhanded methods of weaseling his way back into Hollywood rather slimy on their own.
But to be as objective as a subjectively opinionated critical voice can be, I don't think his work (what I've seen of it) is that good. I remember watching Powder as a tweeny-something cinephile and thinking it was a conceptually under-explored, lesser version of other films of its era, like Phenomenon, Michael, and City Of Angels; too over my head, self-indulgent, and as sad and boring as a "psychic albino kid" movie could possibly get. The Jeepers Creepers trilogy isn't that good on re-watch, either. But the Creeper itself makes a crazy first impression, and is a top-tier movie monster. More on that when we get to the movies themselves.
First, remember to like and comment down below, and beware spoilers for movies that are between five and twenty-one years old. Here are some Google links if you want to watch them for yourselves:
Second, I will be reviewing (and viewing) the trilogy in chronological order, rather than release order, as the third film is an interquel. Let's get started.
Ticketmaster's Note: the monster is never referred to as "The Creeper" in any of the original films, outside of the credits, making it almost a fan term. But considering the director's past, The Creeper is kind of an apt name for a movie monster who drives a van and sniffs people.
Why does The Creeper sniff people, you ask? Well, when Trish and Darry make it to the next Florida redneck approximation of civilization to ask for help, they receive a call--this is the early 2000s, so it's on a land line in a diner/bar because cell phones weren't really mainstream yet--from the town psychic (played by Bones' boss lady, Patricia Belcher). Aside from randomly asking Darry about cats and telling him to be afraid of the titular song, the psychic (whose name is Jezelle Gay Hartman because they let drag queens play MadLibs in the writers' room again, probably) later explains that The Creeper hunts every twenty-three years for twenty-three days, scaring people so it can smell whether or not they have any body parts that it can eat to repair its ancient host body, sort of like if the Frankenstein monster was an RPG character. I guess there might be some inspiration from Asian mysticism in here, like it smells where most of your adrenaline goes, or smells your neuron conductivity or something. Horror analysis YouTuber Roanoke Gaming supposes that the electrical and radio interference caused by The Creeper (including having a literal murder follow him everywhere, and being able to broadcast the titular song) are a natural ability of his parasitic species rather than demonic occurrences, so The Creeper "smelling" neurochemical secretions and conductivity sounds plausible.
And it turns out he has a thing for Darry.
But because this is a horror movie, the lead characters scream and whine most of their dialogue, and no one believes anyone else despite the diner having Missing Persons wallpaper and there being a fucking psychic in the movie, any useful information is instantly disregarded as insane rambling, and all other "help" comes at the pace of a bureaucratic snail, such that The Creeper has time to burn down the church, break into the Jenners' car and sniff Darry's dirty laundry, and then murder several police officers, diner patrons, and a cat-lady (played by the late Eileen Brennan).
Ticketmaster's Note: appropriately for this movie and the scene she's in, Brennan's filmography includes such titles as Scarecrow, Nourish the Beast, Murder By Death, Rented Lips, and Tales From the Crypt.
Our leads stand around and watch while the cat lady is killed because they're annoying and stupid and we haven't heard them scream at each other enough even though it's about to be Act III, and somehow they survive this encounter. Maybe they aren't scared enough? Not enough people are dead? Whatever the case, if a long fall down a drainage pipe and being unlikable idiots in a horror movie aren't enough to get these two killed, I don't know what to tell you all.
After getting to their car (which somehow still works after being run off the road by The Creeper, suffering front-end damage, and being subjected to Trish's frantic gear-grinding), Trish decides to play chicken with The Creeper and runs him over multiple times, learning in the process that he has wings. But we can clearly see that she does little more than crush his legs and torso (which she finds satisfactory despite mentioning some horror movie knowledge earlier in the movie), and if the monster's head is intact in a horror movie, it isn't dead.
"But we ran it over until there was nothing left!" No, you didn't.
"We ground it into dust!" No, you didn't.
Trish then drives them to the police station, where we get more disregarded exposition from Jezelle, The Creeper repairs itself by chowing down on some prisoners and cops, and soon, Jezelle, Trish, and Derry are the only ones left. There is some attempt at misdirecting the audience as to which of them The Creeper will take (Jezelle even mentions lungs while looking at Trish, then mentions eyes while looking at Darry), but this only serves to cause more infighting and stupid behavior. It's been hinted the entire movie that The Creeper wants Darry, and "Jeepers Creepers" is a song about eyes, so guess what happens!?
Cut to the next morning with Trish waiting on a bench inside the police station, after which she confronts Jezelle about her evasive speech and the accuracy of her visions. Then we follow a crow in flight to The Creeper's new lair in some kind of abandoned industrial facility, and sure enough, the movie ends with The Creeper having taken Darry's eyes for himself.
Too much infighting, whining, screaming, and stupid behavior from the characters (especially Trish and Darry). But everything surrounding The Creeper in this first movie, from that church basement reveal to the creature lore and design, to his gear (just an axe and a basic truck in this, but things get wild in the sequels) is some of the best and most uniquely disturbing in horror history. Like the old Universal films, slasher movies, and kaiju franchises, Jeepers Creepers is a movie you watch for the monster, not for the human characters. And what a monster it is.
C+
In present day, it is a day after the events of the first film. We learn through exposition that Trish is still inside, waiting for her parents to pick her up from out of state. The remains of the police force (those that weren't scared enough or didn't smell good enough to be sampled by The Creeper, or were out on other business) have processed the remains of the church and discovered The Creeper's abandoned truck with the rest of his "wrapped in a sheet..." collection in the back. And in this movie, the truck is a character all its own. Spiked bars that come out of bad-CGI hammerspace, a tailpipe spear-launcher, doors that open and shut by themselves, exploding Phantasm spheres, that cow-catcher on the front, those license plates.... Between all of that, the themed shurikens, and the axe, this movie turned The Creeper into a knockoff Batman. If it were still the 90s, The Creeper would have his own animated series and a toy line. Of course, if this were the 90s, the director would still be serving parole, and the franchise wouldn't exist yet, but I said I would be objective about the series, so back to that.
It's dark, the police have the Creeper Wagon, and it manages to gore up an officer's arm with the doorway spikes and destroy a police cruiser with its spear. As it's been almost a generation since the first movie's release, we know why Trish doesn't come out whining and screaming to investigate (digital de-aging wouldn't be available for three more years, and a direct-to-video film with SyFy Channel CGI can only afford so much makeup), but it's still unusual that the cops would mention her being in the station when there's screaming and other loud noises going on outside, and she doesn't come out to see why. Bad writing for the sake of continuity?
Bad writing for the sake of continuity.
A new bit of Creeper lore is also introduced in Jeepers Creepers 3 about how knowing his secrets might be his greatest weakness. This will later tie into the severed arm, and quickly ties into the next scene, where The Creeper's newly appointed Evil BaTmAn status has him swoop in to interrupt the Creeper Wagon's transport to impound and grab one of the officers for a quick bite. I'm beginning to wonder if people gawking while he kills someone is part of his power set because, just like with Trish, Darry, and the cat lady in the first movie, the female officer who was riding with Officer Snack just watches The Creeper take him, despite having an almost point-blank headshot lined up. Sergeant Tubbs (Brandon Smith, reprising his role from Act III of the first film because old people age more gracefully than young people?) even says he had The Creeper dead to rights and couldn't take the shot. Power set lore expansion? Or bad writing to have characters making stupid decisions in a horror movie?
Probably both.
The impound ambush has the police panicking and submitting to mob mentality as they round up every survivor of the last cycle (a time period that could have made for a better prequel than we got, but money, controversy, and fourteen years of production Hell can really neuter ambition) for a Halloween Kills/pre-Nightmare On Elm Street revenge plot that centers on a deceased airman's son with Creeper PTSD and a truck-mounted mini-gun. Going on Darry's "we ran it over until there was nothing left" logic, the manic young man believes that his weapon can "throw up a wall of fire" and rip The Creeper to shreds. But as this is an interquel and the Creeper Wagon is bulletproof, so this viewer knows better and doesn't care.
Speaking of not caring what characters do, and because this is a Jeepers Creepers movie, we must have a psychic woman who everyone thinks is crazy and has Gay in her name, an unlikeable brother-sister duo, and two characters with awkward chemistry.
The designated psychic this time is Gaylen Brandon (Overlord's Meg Foster), who frequently has visions of her son, Kenny. Kenny's spirit tells her to run and take her granddaughter, Addison, with her because The Creeper is coming to reclaim the severed arm that's buried on her property. But she decides to send Addison to live with friends while she stays to "expect company" instead. This, along with Addison having frequently seen her grandmother on the hill while the wind cries "Kenny" (Jimi Hendrix and South Park in one reference!?), satisfies the stupid decision and discredited psychic quota all in one go, but we're not done yet!
The unlikeable brother-sister part of the Jeepers Creepers checklist is covered by Kirk and Gracie Mathers. Kirk (played by TV actor Ryan Moore) likes torturing animals and might have a thing for his mother, and Gracie (NCIS: New Orleans' Meg Wright) is chipper and Southern when not shrieking at her Norman Bates-alike brother, is barely called by name, and meets the minimum definition of a character by the skin of her teeth.
Our "main characters" (read: the teenagers with uncomfortably cheesy chemistry, whom we are made to follow while most of the cool stuff happens somewhere else, until there are almost no other characters left) are the awfully named Addison Brandon (Days Of Our Lives regular Gabrielle Haugh) and her "friend," Buddy Hooks (Chester Rushing, Stranger Things 4). I suppose I should give Salva credit for his "get to know the characters" writing here, as Addison is given a hobby (competitive dressage), financial troubles, and family drama with her "crazy" grandmother. But most of this has no bearing on the plot. At no point is she required to outrun The Creeper on a horse, sacrifice said horse for her own safety (thus ruining any chance she once had to lessen her family's debt), or otherwise give us any reason to root for her besides her awkward chemistry with Buddy. And making it so a man is the only reason to root for a woman? That's not right. It isn't pedophilia-wrong, but it's antiquated characterization that doesn't do any favors for the character we are told we're supposed to care about.
That thing about Gracie not mattering? And that other thing I said about female characters only mattering because of male characters? Well, Kirk and his buddies (who look like the ugliest Power Rangers lineup ever) do a dirt-biking montage out in the woods that gets cut short when they also discover the seemingly abandoned Creeper Wagon. The same few tricks are trotted out as before (spiked bars, Scorpion spear in the tailpipe, slamming doors), but with a decent attempt at suspense that has the audience anticipating when these four assholes (especially Psycho Kirk and the one who urinated on the vehicle's fender) will get what's coming to them.
Meanwhile, Gaylen digs up The Creeper's arm and learns how old it is, where it came from, and how to kill it, by holding hands with it and getting lifted off the ground by some of the only good special effects in the movie. The Sherriff also learns The Creeper's secret. But because this is an interquel with bad writing, neither of them attempts to share or use this information against The Creeper beyond pissing it off and repelling it. There isn't even any constricted narrative irony where the audience gets to know the secret and be pissed off at the ignorant characters, and that pisses me off!
Also, Addison's and Buddy's relationship develops and is tested by The Creeper capturing her. Unfortunately, when Addison wakes up in the Creeper Wagon, Kirk is still alive, and she's happy to see him even though the last time she saw him, he was torturing a rabbit and kissing his mother. Fortunately, when he tries to find them a way out of the Wagon, Kirk takes a pipe through the head and dies, leaving Addison to play the final girl and temporarily dispatch The Creeper with the same trap.
The armed vengeance mob (especially the Sherriff, Tubbs, and Michael--the traumatized guy with the mini-gun) are all killed, which leaves Buddy, Addison, and Gaylen as the only survivors of this film. Until the next day, when Buddy gets on a certain bus with a certain basketball team chanting a familiar fight song.
The Final Destination franchise (maybe next year's Halloween special?) did a similar ending reveal with one of its films, and the shock value there was great because what clues they gave throughout were subtle, and there wasn't any true indication of the time frame of that film until the reveal itself happened. But with Jeepers Creepers 3, the beginning scenes give a firm timeline, and Buddy briefly mentions that he's on the Bannon High basketball team near the beginning of the movie, so not only will fans of the series know what's coming, that knowledge instills a feeling of tragedy in the pair's developing relationship at best, and fosters viewer apathy at worst.
Salva and crew must have realized this (as well as the early Trish blunder) because they blend that scene into an "as you know" news clip that cuts to an older Trish Jenner (still played by Gina Phillips) twenty-three years later, doing a podcast/vlog entry on her experiences with The Creeper and vowing to take him on herself when the next cycle starts. It would have been cool to see a Halloween 2018/Terminator: Dark Fate-type sequel where that happens, but considering that it took fourteen years to get the third film released direct to video, and that Jeepers Creepers 3 featured a scene where a grown man expresses a desire to put Addison "on his 'load list'," and that the writer/director/producer once also put children on his load list, there wasn't an eagerness to upgrade the troubled trilogy to a quadrilogy.
As for the quality of the film itself, Jeepers Creepers 3 not only botched a potentially impactful timeline reveal and neutered the suspense of its stakes by being an interquel, it was unnecessarily bloated by too many characters and storylines, underutilized its lore, and diluted the fear and mystique of its villain through low quality CGI, an abundance of daylight kills, and an over-reliance on gadgets and theatricality. I didn't think I could be bored by a horror movie, but the third Jeepers Creepers put me to sleepers.
D-
On the twenty-second day of the same cycle, Jack Taggert (Twin Peaks' Ray Wise) vows revenge on The Creeper when his youngest son, Billy, is taken and killed.
The next day, the Bannon Bantams basketball team are returning from their championship victory (perhaps explaining why Buddy got on the bus, but wasn't present for its return trip?) when their bus suffers a flat tire by one of The Creeper's bone shurikens. Far from radio or cellular reception, the team must contend with boredom and racial and gender tensions amongst themselves while they wait for help to arrive. The Creeper arrives first, however, and what ensues is a lot of suspense, terror, action, simple but powerful social dynamics, and shockingly good, effects-driven visuals that I dare not spoil here.
The two stories slowly converge, and cool action set-pieces happen.
That's it. A simple revenge goal, some disposable high school stereotypes, and an iconic movie monster. It mostly all happens in a single location (the bus on Route 9), and The Creeper has perhaps a bit too much personality, a la post-Elm Street 3 Freddy, but Jeepers Creepers 2 is the one I most recommend watching because what Salva and crew do with the little they have is pretty amazing. The movie manages to have a minimalist plot that isn't rendered boring by its pacing, nor annoying by its bickering characters because (unlike Trish and Derry, who are immature and argue because that's what Hollywood thinks all brothers and sisters do) they are a diverse group of acquaintances whose only bond is sports teamwork. When The Creeper traps them all in the bus together, white turns against black, jock against nerd, straight against gay, man against woman, and it makes sense, almost feeling like an old, xenophobia-centric episode of The Twilight Zone.
If no one else, I feel I must mention three stand-out characters. First is the franchise-requisite psychic, Minxie Hayes (a rare heroine role for Supernatural season one antagonist, Nicki Aycox), whose visions provide most of the lore exposition and the only connection to the first film (Justin Long has a cameo as Darry's ghost in one of her dreams). The other two of note are Jack Taggert, Sr. and Jr. Ray Wise, much like Aycox, has been typecast in villain roles for most of his career, based on his appearance and line delivery. But he makes for one hell of an aging action hero in Jeepers Creepers 2, both in the bulk of the film itself, and in the scene after the time skip to the next cycle, where his age makeup is pretty good and he delivers his final lines with cold, venomous badassery. Jack, Jr. (True Detective's Luke Edwards pre-skip, FreakyLinks' Jon Powell post-skip) serves as his father's driver for most of the film while Jack, Sr. is manning his home-made harpoon gun, but Edwards has decent dramatic line delivery. The post-skip Junior is notable for being an exploitative idiot, charging curious teenagers five dollars each to gawk at the "Bat Out Of Hell" and listen to his father's Moby Dick stories, instead of incinerating the body and sparing the world more death and destruction.
But, just like the film that came out fourteen years later and was set a few days earlier, there had to be bait for a sequel that would never come.
When I was watching these films at time of release all those years ago, I was captivated by the shock value of The Creeper's "House Of Pain" (as Jezelle calls it--maybe The Creeper is an Everlast fan?), so I didn't find Trish as annoying back then as I did on re-watch, and it disappointed me to watch the second film, expecting Trish to be a returning focal character, only to be greeted with an entirely new cast and a brief Darry cameo. But now, having seen all three in event order, I have a much higher opinion of Jeepers Creepers 2. Maybe I'm curving my rating because of how annoying the first film was and how unfocused the third was, but this second outing really hits the perfect middle ground and has some of the most iconic imagery in the franchise, if not all of horror. Plus, The Creeper is a great movie monster, and this shows how effective and formidable he can be when not encumbered by gadgets. That sequel-bait ending drags it down just a bit to a
B+
Laine (EastEnders' Sydney Craven, no relation to Wes) and her boyfriend, Chase (Ghosts' Imran Adams, who can barely hold an American accent here) are on their way to the Horror Hound festival in Louisiana. Laine is pregnant and psychic. Chase is going to propose to Laine, but he's a chickenshit who'd rather get off to making her do sexy cosplay than get on one knee. And it's about to be time for The Creeper to wake up. So when Chase and Laine stop at an antique shop for directions, it turns out the proprietor is also a psychic. And evil. And she wants to give Laine's baby to The Creeper for reasons that are barely explored because she's in a Creeper worshipping cult that's barely in the movie.
At the Horror Hound festival, Laine learns to thrown Creeper shurikens for reasons that will be vaguely important to the climax later, and the antiques lady fixes the festival lottery so that Laine and Chase win a couple's "escape room" at the Barnabett House (which is supposed to be important to the history of The Creeper, but was never mentioned or shown in the original trilogy, and is in a completely different state), which is an obvious trap that turns the movie into a claustrophobic, generic, indoor slasher...in a series where the villain can fucking fly. Why is there a Creeper cult? Why does The Creeper need to specifically eat a baby during this specific cycle? Does The Creeper need to eat a baby during every cycle? If this is really the cycle directly after the events of the trilogy, where are Trish and the Taggerts? Why has The Creeper never targeted a psychic until now? You'd think that with the whole cryptophobian Kryptonite plot from the third movie, The Creeper would want to kill people who are attuned to his nature, or at least grow his power by eating the eyes or brain of a psychic. But no. None of these questions seem to be worth answering because the movie jumps the characters from unfinished plot to unfinished plot. Chase wanting to propose to Laine even stops being a thing for most of the second half of the movie while he puts her through that sexy cosplay montage and hits on a podcaster in a graveyard.
Much like Minxie in the second movie, Laine is the only competent female character in Reborn, and the only competent character, period. The movie ends with Laine putting her bone shuriken skills to badass use (complete with an action movie one-liner that has the word, "bitch" in it), the surviving male characters doing a reenactment of the Vecna-bats scene from Stranger Things 4 with bad-CGI crows in front of obvious green-screen and running The Creeper through with a bad-CGI weathervane, which causes the bad-CGI crows to swarm his body while the survivors just walk away, thinking they killed him. But later and elsewhere, the bad-CGI crows somehow reassemble The Creeper, who pulls a Lawnmower Man-meets-crazy-Bruce-Campbell face at the camera. The end.
Points for the meta-reboot angle, doing unique things with the psychic final girl trope that has become a staple of these things, doing the music themselves, and trying to create romantic chemistry with stakes. But Chase is unlikeable, the CGI is bad, the story is the wrong mix of too much and not enough, and The Creeper's arsenal and abilities are all but omitted for the sake of budget.
Then there's the fact that so many production companies were involved in making the series that some of them assumed copyright ownership of the franchise and sold it off to another production company without the actual owner's input or consent, and now, not only is Jeepers Creepers: Reborn the worst entry in the franchise, it's been decanonized and must be considered a fan film because of a lawsuit. Thanks again, Corporate Greed!
F (and yes, that includes the "extra" points)
The RWBY Anime Spotlight will have to wait until next week because today was Halloween. But I'll have an anime-related New Piece Offering for you later this week that, like RWBY, has elements of thematic coloring.
Ticketmaster,
Wanting to sleep for 23 years.
Out.
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