More like Jeepers Sleepers?
As a die hard fan of the first two Jeepers Creepers movies, it pains me to say this: Jeepers Creepers 3 is the low point of the franchise, one from which I hope, but doubt, it will recover.
The long-gestating third installment in the horror series from writer/director Victor Salva has been rumored ever since the second film came out to less than favorable reviews in 2003. Initially called Jeepers Creepers: Cathedral, a dozen years of development saw the subtitle and initial plot dropped in favor of the more straightforward title Jeepers Creepers 3 -- or III, the marketing seems divided -- and the dull, meandering story that arrived on theater screens for one night only on September 26.
We may never know exactly where Cathedral would have taken the Creeper, though according to Jonathan Breck, the actor who plays him, that screenplay has been re-purposed into a season's worth of television scripts. What's more certain, however, is that it was probably a much better story than what ultimately made it on screen.
Picking up immediately after the events of the first film (even bringing back Brandon Smith's well-intentioned policeman Sgt. Tubbs), Jeepers Creepers 3 tries its level best to do something new with the franchise but the effort feels half-formed. This time around there's a heavier emphasis on past generations' interactions with the Creeper as we meet (in both living and ghostly form) victims from the monster's last romp 23 years prior. Our protagonist is a high school girl named Addie (Gabrielle Haugh) who lives with her grandmother (Meg Foster) on a farmstead on the verge of insolvency.
Addie is a brooding pool of sadness, presumably due to a combination of abject poverty and what can only be called tasteless, cursory allusions to a history of sexual abuse at the hands of her step-father. (One particularly odious character even goes so far as to remark, "Can you blame the step-dad though? I mean look at her. The heart wants what it wants, am I right?") Meanwhile, her grandmother is a wreck and routinely shouts at a ghost only she can see. It turns out her son, Addie's uncle, was killed by the Creeper all those years ago but not before secreting away some relic of great importance to it.
We're quickly introduced to a paramilitary task force made up of Creeper survivors wearing matching hats and shoulder patch insignia depicting a skull attached to the creature's wing. Though it's not entirely clear they seem to be law enforcement -- their leader, played by Stan Shaw, is credited as Sherriff Tashtego -- which is possibly why no one questions them when they commandeer all available resources to hunt down a flying monster. Taking a page from the best part of Jeepers Creepers 2, the group is armed with a truck-mounted weapon. Unfortunately, this time it's a comically huge chaingun rather than Farmer Taggart's subtler and vastly more interesting harpoon. This alone, they foolishly believe, will allow them to kill the unkillable.
Attempting to offer more of a look into the Creeper's mythology, the film recasts his trademark rusty meat wagon as a supernatural, quasi-sentient being capable of driving itself, firing off explosive live-action equivalents of the red shells from Mario Kart, and triggering mechanically impossible traps anytime someone is stupid enough to stick his head inside. It's an odd and unnecessary choice that stretches the limits of the audience's ability to suspend its disbelief. A winged immortal serial killer is incredible enough without making him some kind of automotive enchanter to boot.
Much is made of the artifact buried on Addie's farm, suggesting it will give the characters (and the audience) some crucial insight into the Creeper's history, perhaps even expose a vulnerability that could bring about its demise. Unfortunately we never find out if it does or not; we don't get so much as a glimpse at what the characters see when they touch it and go into a white-eyed trance. They never even describe it. For fans eager to learn where this monster comes from it's monumentally disappointing.
All that might have been forgivable if the characters and script were stronger. The two high schoolers at the center of the proceedings are as one-dimensional as the busload of kids in the second film and just as forgettable. Peripheral characters do things like ask someone to go get the police while holding a fully operative cell phone in hand. The squad of hunters is painfully inept. Its efforts to defeat the Creeper border on pathetic when compared to what the heroes of first two films accomplished. The creature has its way with just about everyone except a few stragglers, then suddenly, with little fanfare, the movie ends and whoever is left alive just gets to walk away. There's no thrilling final battle with the Creeper, no surprise, last second kill as the monster makes its escape. The surviving characters just wander off while the Creeper does...something else? Granted some of that is in service to setting up the events of the second movie, but it felt unsatisfying standing on its own.
All that said, the Creeper remains one of the more interesting modern movie monsters. Sporting a snazzy new red shirt that recalls Wesley Snipes in Blade III, he still exudes the same graceful menace that's been a selling point of the series since the beginning. When he stares a soon-to-be victim down, the whites of his unwavering eyes contrasting sharply with his grotesque, oily face, Breck's Creeper is just as chilling as ever. In other words, he's still got it. It's just a shame the movie around him isn't up to the challenge.
The Verdict
An unremarkable entry in a cult favorite franchise, Jeepers Creepers 3 offers fans little to get excited about. While the monster still rules its slice of country highway and the skies above it, the rest of the film crashes in the cornfields.
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