First Things First…
I saw this at an employee screening at the movie theater I worked at the night before it came out in 2001. I was just getting into horror back then, so even though I was 20 at the time, it’s one of the first horror films I ever saw. And I loved it immediately. I’ve never wavered on that, either, though it’s probably been about 10 years since the last time I watched it.
The Creeper may be ridiculous, but he’s also cool, creepy, and completely memorable.
7 Things I Like
7. Useless Dreamer
Jez has a good heart. She’s likeable. And she does her absolute best to help Trish and Darry, despite her overwhelming fear of what they’re facing—and the fact that everyone thinks she’s a crackpot.
Turns out, she’s not a crackpot. Her dreams lead her to the police station, where she finally meets the kids. The problem is, her dreams never showed her a way for them to escape their fate.
The most fascinating part is that Trish and Darry eventually realize she knows things end badly for one of them. Like, as badly as you can possibly imagine….
… with the “Jeepers Creepers” song playing on an old phonograph, in the dark, someplace underground, with one of them screaming their last screams.
And she knows which sibling will die, but she won’t tell them, which makes for an interesting dynamic as they all fight for a way out, and a way to change their fate.
6. “Jeepers Creepers, Where’d You Get Those Peepers?”
“You hear that song, you run. And I mean run. ‘Cause that song means something terrible for you. Something so terrible you couldn’t dream of it, not in your worst, most terrible nightmare.”
Jezelle Gay Hartman
This movie didn’t really have to be called Jeepers Creepers. I don’t think a Creeper is a real (well, real-ish, in stories) monster. He could’ve been called something different. But they use the song, and it’s another aspect of the movie that’s easy to remember and latch onto long after you watched it.
The fact that it’s a harmless old jazz song makes it all the better. On its own, it’d never scare anyone. But when Jez puts it in context and tells them its gonna lead to their doom, it becomes a lot more frightening.
5. Brother/Sister Road Trip
Darry and Trish can be annoying, but it’s refreshing that it’s a brother and sister, rather than a boyfriend and girlfriend, at the center of the movie. They banter, they play silly games to pass the time in the car, they poke fun at each other over relationships, hygiene, driving skill, and more.
Most of all, you can tell they love each other. Even when they get pissed at one another. And that makes all the difference when it comes to giving this story a heart, and making their fate actually matter.
That’s why I love when Trish pleads with the Creeper to take her instead of him. It sounds sincere. She really would die for her brother.
4. Rough Ending for Darry
To me, this is an all-time great horror ending.
Granted, there’s the part of me that wanted Darry to survive. I like Justin Long, even when he plays a little shit. But I can’t deny how creepy this is.
It’s exactly as Jez described it. We hear Darry’s screams, low at first but getting louder, as we make our way through the Creeper’s new lair, which is marked by the crows outside…
Then we see the phonograph and hear the song…
And finally, the big reveal—the Creeper has gotten his new “peepers,” while Darry is out of luck.
3. The Creeper
Some people think the Creeper looks too silly, and I get that sentiment. Between the wings, the long gray hair in the back, the trench coat and hat—it’s not for everyone. But I think he’s awesome.
I like that, much like Freddy Krueger, he has a sense of humor. He whistles the “Jeepers Creepers” song after murdering the cops, right before getting disturbingly intimate with one of their severed heads.
Then, the funniest moment of the movie is when he loads one of their bodies in the back of his truck, closes it, so the screen goes black for about three seconds, then opens the back door again and casually tosses the head in, too, as if he almost forgot about it.
But it’s not all laughs with the Creeper…
Our first full look at his face comes at about the 57-minute mark, and he’s scary—especially because he’s already terrorized them on the road, and up until this point, they thought there were dealing with a man.
Little by little, we see more of what he can do.
After Trish hits him with the car and runs him over a few times, hoping she’s killed him, he unfurls his wings while looking nearly dead on the ground. That’s how we find out he can fly.
In one of the creepiest scenes, he looks like a giant bat when the cop is taking a head count during the blackout in the police station, and the Creeper is naked, with his back turned and his wings out, crouched down and eating a prisoner.
The high-pitched shriek he gives off when the crown-like webbing opens around his head as he holds Darry hostage and the cops all have their guns trained on him makes him look like a devil.
And one part that still legitimately creeps me out is watching him fly off with Darry as Trish runs outside the police station, screaming after them.
2. House of Pain
“This guy must have five… maybe 600 bodies down there, and I’ve seen them! Stuck up on the walls like some psycho version of the Sistine Chapel!”
Darry Jenner
The full reveal of the Creeper’s lair—what Jez tells them he calls his House of Pain—in the church basement might be my single favorite scene in the movie, and one of my favorite horror scenes ever.
It starts with Darry finding the dying young man tied up and bagged, whose entire torso has been split open and very shoddily sewn closed.
But it gets really fun as soon as he enters the inner portion of the lair…
Darry is looking at the workbench at first, but we can see bodies attached to the wall. We just don’t see the full extent of the horror right away. It’s dark, a little unclear, and they’re out of focus.
When Darry bends down to tie his shoe, his flashlight shines over his shoulder, and we see more bodies fixed to the walls, but they’re still out of focus. But something starts to drip on his shoe, causing him to stand up and look at the ceiling and around the walls. Now he—and we—can see just how horrific this place is, and how much death the Creeper is responsible for.
1. Daytime Scares
At least half the movie happens in broad daylight, before they know the Creeper isn’t human, and these scenes are just as scary as anything that comes after the sun goes down.
They’re driving through a desolate area as the movie opens. One of the first lines is about how they haven’t seen another car in about 50 miles. Right from the start, one way to make things scary in daytime is to have no one anywhere near you…
… or maybe just one person near you, and no on else for miles.
Because when “Sexy Forever” turns off the road behind them, another truck appears WAAAAAY in the distance, which they’re oblivious to. And it takes a while—but also comes up on them really fast.
This is an excellent suspense scene as the truck gets closer and closer, then the horn jars and unnerves them.
They think they’re in the clear when the truck finally passes them and leaves them in the dust. But things get even scarier when they see the truck on the side of the road… and the Creeper dumping a body down a drain pipe.
Again, it’s unnerving when they drive by slowly, unable to stop themselves from looking at what he’s doing, when suddenly he’s staring them down from a distance, seeing them see him. This leads to another, even more dangerous chase sequence.
And that’s still not the end of the scary daytime scenes…
The imagery of the church is also very cool and creepy. The dilapidated exterior, the broken cross on the roof, and the cawing crows all add to the atmosphere. Not to mention the big drainage pipe itself sticking out of the ground. I would NOT want to live near something like that.
Then, of course, shit really goes off the rails at night. But that’s to be expected.
1 Thing I’m Mixed On
1. Incomplete Mythology
“I don’t know if it’s a demon or a devil, or just some hungry thing from some dark place in time… I just know it’s not gonna stop coming after you or anyone else it wants to. ‘Cause once it has the scent of something it likes… it can’t… it can’t stop.”
Jezelle Gay Hartman
I would’ve liked to get a little more info about what the Creeper is. If anyone would know, it would seem to be Jez, since she dreams about the thing. But she doesn’t know either.
What she does know is that…
“Every 23rd spring… for 23 days… it gets to… eat.”
This is when she reveals that it only eats certain things. Somehow, eating other people’s lungs allows it to breathe, for example. And eyes, of course, let it see…
“Whatever it eats… becomes a part of it. It dresses like a man, but only to hide that it’s not.”
It’s a cool concept, and you’d think that if she knows the exact terms of the Creeper’s rampages—23 days every 23 years—she’d know why that happens. Is he leaving Hell? Does he just hibernate in his lair for a long time? It’s so specific that I’d like to know why it is what it is.
Then again, sometimes these things are scarier when you don’t fully understand them.
2 Things I Don’t Like
2. A Nitpick About the Pipe
The Creeper dumps a body down the pipe, then immediately jumps in his truck to chase down Trish and Darry. He eventually drives past them when they go off the road. So when they go back to investigate the pipe, no one—assuming the Creeper isn’t working with an assistant, which I think is a safe assumption—has moved the body he dumped.
So shouldn’t it be at the foot of the pipe? Basically, where Darry lands when he falls?
Instead, the body is a few feet in, up on a stone platform—a position it would be impossible to have reached just by being dumped down the pipe.
I realize that, to make the scene work, the body has to be out of sight from the top of the pipe. But it still doesn’t make sense.
1. Every Stupid Decision
“You know the part in scary movies where somebody does something really stupid, and everybody hates them for it? This is it.”
Trish Jenner
I guess the fact that Trish called him selfish earlier is the way to explain Darry’s sudden interest in doing the right thing. He even says…
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. I’m thinking past the point of my own selfish little existence now, OK? We’re both pretty damn sure what we saw him dump down that pipe, right? What if it’s someone still alive? Someone who needs help.”
But he argues to do something awfully brave, and stupid, after they literally just got run off the road in their second encounter with a maniac who they have reason to suspect is a murderer. It doesn’t jive that he’d be brave enough to risk this, especially knowing that truck is bound to return eventually.
Then there’s Trish walking toward the cop car after both cars spun out, completely ignoring the fact that moments earlier, a severed head bounced on their car.
And Darry begs her to slow down after the Creeper murdered the cops, and then Trish insists on stopping at the house they come to, with all the cats. I’m not sure what good a phone would do at this point, since the cops are already dead.
And I know—without these two making some dumb decisions, we wouldn’t have a movie. But I still have to point them out when they’re so nonsensical.
Tim Matassa
