Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
For most people, I assume that Justin Long is that one mildly awkward, mildly attractive actor who helped convert us all to the cult of Mac. But to me, Justin Long is a boyishly charming acting force that I will endlessly forgive. Why? Because Justin Long helped turn the B-grade teen horror movie Jeepers Creepers into the special combination of fright and camp it currently is.
There’s a sense of disappointment that permeates Jeepers Creepers, mostly because the middle of the movie devolves into predictable, paint-by-the-numbers teen horror. For a moment, set aside those criticisms. Jeepers Creepers deserves your attention again this Halloween for its great beginning (the first 30 minutes) and half delightfully insane, half horrifying ending (the last five minutes). For anyone who has driven through the middle of nowhere, the start of Jeepers Creepers is the stuff of nightmares. Some random, aggressive driver attacking you for absolutely no reason — and that same driver targeting you for the rest of your life — that was my secret fear every time I drove home from college. Of course this being a horror movie, being run off the road naturally leads Darry (Long) and Trish (Gina Phillips) to explore an abandoned church, filled with stitched up bodies. It’s when Darry discovers those bodies that Jeepers Creepers really settles into its fun tone.
On a surface level, the horrors in this movie are not frightening. The dead bodies look waxy and fake and even the monster looks like a higher grade Creature from the Black Lagoon. However, Long’s character sells the fear in this movie, and he sells it well. Whenever Darry encounters these disturbing elements, he approaches them with a believable level of wide-eyed, shell-shocked horror that immediately raises the stakes of the movie. That strength may have a lot to do with Darry’s gender.
In most horror movies, the victim is typically a woman who either eventually dies in some horrific fashion or kills her potential killer right at the end and leaves with a severe case of PTSD. Because our protagonist in Jeepers Creepers is the college-aged, everyman Darry, one specific horror movie convention is tweaked to adapt to the gender swap: the final girl scream. For whatever reason, Darry rarely screams, the movie instead relying on Long to communicate his fear through doe-eyed panicked expressions. Long still shows a good amount of skin, keeping him in line with his final girl peers, but his performance is noticeably less active and slightly more subtle. Even though the performance is still campy, you can’t help but get a little scared by the movie’s often silly-looking scares, which brings me to The Creeper.
The Jeepers Creepers monster is just a fun monster. On a surface level, it looks creepy but not too creepy, which adds to the horror camp tone of the movie. It’s powerful, but not all-powerful, evil but in a manageable way. The Creeper will definitely ruin your afternoon, but he probably won’t bring the end of civilization as we know it. There’s even a Silence of the Lambs vibe to it, as evidenced by the movie’s plethora of skin-focused stitches. The Creeper basically combines every horror convention in the book, but it’s still scary and it’s oddly even more fun. Watching Jeepers Creepers almost becomes a game. Which horror convention are they going to play with next? Prophetic old lady? Creepy old timey theme song? Monster versus car face off? The Creeper even has a stylish hat! Like Freddy Krueger! It’s not great cinema, but it sure is delightful. Also, did you know that Jeepers Creepers was set in Florida, which means The Creeper lived in Florida? Doesn’t that make all the sense in the world?
Out of all the dumb, teen horror movies out there, my favorite will always be Victor Salva and executive producer Francis Ford Coppola’s campy story about how a Florida swamp creature ate Justin Long’s eyes. Yes, it is very odd, and yes, it does often erratically swing from pure terror to camp. However, Jeepers Creepers breathed some much-needed new and camp-filled life into the monster movie genre.
