Rent Jeepers Creepers (2001)

STUPIDLY-MORBID CURIOSITY IS STUPID - Jeepers Creepers review by Frank Talker™

The masochistic stupidity of the two main characters here is so annoying that it is difficult to empathise with them, since the life-threatening situation that they are in is largely avoidable and mostly of their own making.

It is an eternal oddity of horror films made in the West that White characters are somehow ineluctably-desirous of putting themselves into obvious danger, rather than doing the sensible thing and getting away from the obvious danger as fast as possible.

And the obvious danger here is so obvious that a blind person could easily see it: A strange man, in the middle of a sunny day, next to a main highway, disposing of human corpses. Yet they decide to investigate first before contacting the local police.

(Having said that, the first act of Jeepers Creepers is actually based on the true story of a 1990 murderer, Dennis DePUE, in which a married couple actually investigated an obvious murder before thinking to call the police!)

The overall effect of the two-dimensional characterisation and lapses-of-logic is to introduce plot contrivances which reduce any tension or suspense since the main characters are not trapped by the demonic villain, but by their own need to fulfil out-of-date horror tropes, contrivances & genre-movie clichés; eg, three times their old car won't go forward when their lives are in the greatest danger.

Horror is difficult to do well. And a clear decision of the filmmaker must be made at the outset: Allegory, realism or humour; eg, the better, respectively, The Innocents (1961), Psycho (1960) or Evil Dead II (1987). If you try to mix-&-match, as this movie does, the result is a hodge-podge: Is the villain a demon, human or smirking at our deepest fears? We can't tell and, so, don't really care. And without a consistent tone, no solidly-spooky atmosphere is ever created.

This emotional flatness is exacerbated by dialogue which does not reflect the fears of the central characters but, rather, the would-be cleverness of the screenwriter. It's as if these characters are trying-to-be-cool teenagers talking about a horror film that they are watching rather than the one that they are actually in.

This metafictional narrative-technique only serves to emotionally-distance us from the unfolding drama; without offering any of the pleasures of watching the stereotypes that we enjoy so much being lampooned by metafiction; eg, 'You know the part in scary movies where somebody does something really stupid and everyone hates them for it?'

Technically, the film is good-looking with decent special-effects and some nice visual ideas; eg, a one-way mirror in a police interrogation-room into which the heroine stares while not being able to see the threatening villain on the other side. Yet, the movie is undone by the fact that the actors do not inhabit their roles sufficiently to convince us that they are in any real danger. The ending underwhelms presumably because of the low budget and, like the rest of the movie, leaves us feeling distinctly emotionally-unsatisfied.

Ultimately, this movie is not genuinely psychologically-resonant, genuinely scary nor genuinely funny-enough to distract us from its sheer vapidity; making it a horror film written by children for those very same children.

NB: This movie was directed by a registered sex-offender which may explain its odd and thematically-irrelevant fixation upon genital functions and the sniffing of used male underwear. These could have been the basis for a better film, but here they are merely self-indulgent details.