Jeepers Creepers

15

3/5

THE latest rehash of a Stephen King novel delivers just what you would expect though that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Jeepers Creepers gets going pretty quickly. A brother and sister are making their way home to see their parents when suddenly they become the victims of a particularly worrying road rage attack.

When they decide to investigate, their suspicious tormentor we are quickly pulled into a shock-a-minute horror which owes as much to Nightmare on Elm Street as it does Twin Peaks.

As with many Stephen King films, the supernatural villain has a history and a motive for his harassment of the lead characters and we also get the familiar unnerving ending, as the spook isn't "brought to justice" despite getting his pound of flesh.

And, like a lot of modern horror films, Jeepers Creepers seems to cross genres.

There's a little bit of road movie, a bit of teen comedy, and references to spoof horrors like Scary Movie and Scream. This makes it hard to take the film seriously in its own right, as you're never sure what it is trying to do.

But what really scuppers the film are the performances from the lead characters, siblings Trisha and Darius.

Darius, played by Justin Long, looks like he was told to "act scared" once too often by director Victor Salva and Gina Philips' Trisha is so obnoxious you quickly find yourself urging the bogeyman to take her out.

But it is well directed and watchable. The villain is genuinely scary, particularly at the beginning of the film as he plagues the college kids with his bat-out-of-hell driving.

All the ingredients are there for a really good film, but a lack of subtlety and self-conscious acting ultimately let Jeepers Creepers down.

October 25, 2001 16:43

Chris Steel