Jeepers Creepers (2001)

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There's a lot to admire about Jeepers Creepers. It's a horror film, but it's packed with neither the hottest modern rock tracks nor acting talent from any show on the WB. It doesn't start with a pre-opening-credits killing to whet your sick whistle, and there aren't any sex scenes interrupted by a knife-wielding psycho. That's enough to break the conventional horror mold right there, but Creepers is actually somewhat frightening, as well.

Instead of raiding the WB's casting closet, Creepers' producers turned to two other networks from which to pluck their plucky leads. Ed's Justin Long and Boston Public's Gina Philips play Darryl and Trish, a brother and sister who have chosen to take the back roads on their way home from college. The ride is full of good-natured ribbing and a time-passing license plate game, but things take a turn for the worse when a creepy-looking truck with an even creepier-sounding horn appears behind them and tries to run them off the road before disappearing over the horizon.

Of course, that's not the end of Darryl and Trish's trip to the dark side. Further down the road, they find an abandoned farmhouse with the beat-up truck parked next to it. As they slow down, the siblings see a dark figure removing what appears to be corpses from the back of the truck and dropping them down a sewer pipe protruding from the ground. Like every other horror film moron, the two decide to check things out, making themselves targets of a man in black (whom we'll call Creepers, just because he doesn't really have a name).

Creepers' first half is very promising, but then writer/director/child molester Victor Salva (Powder) starts in with the typical horror clichés. I'm talking about stuff like having the car run out of gas or refusing to start at an inopportune moment - not the other stuff that's been "borrowed" from other films, like self-mockery of the genre (a la Scream), bad stuff happening at a secluded farmhouse (a la The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and references to urban legends (a la, uh, Urban Legends). Even the scenes where Creepers tries to run Darryl and Trish off the road seems to be taken right out of Duel, and the whole evil truck thing is done much better in the upcoming Joy Ride.

One of the things that makes Joy Ride so enjoyable is the fact you never see the bad guy. Not here, though. Creepers, who was frightening at the beginning of the film, becomes pretty lame once you get a good look at him. He's like the WWF version of evil. Salva also inserts a completely unnecessary psychic character (Patricia Belcher) into the action, just to explain why Creepers is doing what he's doing, but it was a lot scarier when we didn't know.

Still, Creepers is the most original mainstream American horror film I've seen in a while. It's better B-movie horror than John Carpenter has made in a long time, with a darker baddie and leads that genuinely appear terrified. Creepers is certainly entertaining enough, but in this sequel-crazy world, I'm almost hoping nobody goes to see it, just so there won't be a lame Jeepers Creepers 2 out next Halloween.

1:30 - R for terror violence/gore, language and brief nudity

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X-Language: en
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