Released almost 20 years ago, Jeepers Creepers is a classic horror movie,
and it’s even spawned two sequels. Like any good scary film, it can still induce
hair-raising fear years later, so here’s a recap on what makes it one of a kind.
Jeepers Creepers follows siblings Darius "Darry" Jenner and Patricia "Trish" Jenner,
who begin the movie on a road trip home from college. They’re on spring break
in rural Florida on a country highway, with time on their hands and taking the
scenic route to where they’re going, so the scary-movie setup is perfect.
Unfortunately for Darry and Trish, they don’t take the quicker way home.
Which means they cross paths with a mysterious, demonic creature.
Before they know it, a rusty, ominous-looking truck starts tailgating Darry and Trish.
It’s a subtle nod to another ominous truck that made its appearance in the 1971 Steven
Spielberg-directed TV movie Duel. In that movie, star Dennis Weaver was in the sights of an
unseen driver behind the wheel of a massive, dangerous Peterbilt 281.
In the case of Jeepers Creepers, the audience finds out pretty quickly that the driver
of this truck is a strange creature called the Creeper . He’s not human,
and he can fly – fast – which we find out after Trish starts questioning his movements.
Wondering how someone can loot their car and get back and forth to the church — where the
Creeper keeps his victims — in such record time, Trish eventually takes a guess:
"Maybe he can leap tall buildings at a single bound."
Yes, the Creeper can fly. Unlike many movie monsters though, the Creeper doesn’t just come
out at night. He not only drives but also appears to do his business during all hours of the day.
Darry and Trish first see the Creeper dumping bodies at the abandoned
church that's conveniently located in plain view of the road. Not only do they see this
strange figure unloading corpses into a large pipe that sticks out of the ground,
but they get a clear, full frontal shot of the Creeper after he spots them watching him.
In most monster movies, the monster doesn't usually fight on equal terms.
Monsters stick to their strengths. Vampires, for example, do their monster mashing at night — and
for obvious reasons, as sunlight is one of their biggest weaknesses. However, the Creeper doesn't
have that limitation – he isn’t afraid to roam free and wreak havoc during the daytime.
After the Creeper sees Darry and Trish watching him, he proceeds to get in his truck and chase
after them. He rams into their car several times until their vehicle goes off the side of the road,
and then he speeds off into the distance. At this point in the movie,
the Creeper is only trying to scare the siblings,
so they could have presumably gone on their way mostly unscathed. But Darry decides to be a hero.
Darry convinces his sister to go back to the church to see what the Creeper is throwing down
the pipe. After all, blood-stained sheets that are shaped like human bodies could be anything, right?
"Wrapped in a sheet."
"Wrapped and roped in a sheet."
"Wrapped and roped in a sheet with red stains on it."
Darry hears something coming from the pipe, so he has his sister hold his feet as he
tries to get a better view of what lurks below. He sees rats and freaks out. Trish
lets go of his legs and he falls into the pipe, finding an underground tomb filled
with bodies and one poor victim who's still barely alive but on his way out.
"I found our body."
"You what?"
"I found our -- AHH Jesus! Get off!"
It’s the Creeper's hideout, also referred to as the House of Pain. Instead of helping Darry find
a way out, Trish does as he orders and leaves him to fend for himself so she can try to flag down a
passing car. But against all odds, Darry makes it out, their car starts, and they drive away.
Even at this point, Darry and Trish could probably have left this freaky town and
called for help once they were out of harm's way. But Darry, of course, wants justice for
the lifeless victims he found, so they go to a nearby diner to contact the authorities.
This, unfortunately, gives the Creeper more time to find out that someone discovered his lair,
with all signs pointing to Darry and Trish. It also leaves the door open for the Creeper
to discover that Darry and Trish are in possession of something he needs.
After finding the bodies and linking them to the Creeper,
the siblings contact local authorities to solve a case involving hundreds of dead people.
"Stuck up on the walls, like some psycho version of the Sistine Chapel!"
As they get in deeper, Darry and Trish actually take pretty logical steps to
deal with the monster. And that’s saying something for a horror movie,
a genre that routinely sees the characters do the exact opposite of what they should do.
Even after the first cops to respond are killed by the Creeper, the siblings drive
to an old woman's house and ask to call the police. Caught in the crosshairs,
the Creeper kills the woman. Escaping to their vehicle, Darry and Trish momentarily hurt the
Creeper by running him over. By now, they've seen his inhuman face and know he can fly.
So it wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for them to stop seeking help from the authorities.
And typical horror-movie logic dictates here that Darry and Trish go rogue without
consulting the police anymore, thinking that no one else would believe their tale.
"I'm being chased by a guy who likes to
pull tongues out of severed heads with his teeth. Is there a special extension for that?"
But instead they doggedly press on and go to a police station,
trying again to alert local law enforcement. This inadvertently
involves them in hearing about what a lady sees in her psychic dreams.
Darry and Trish first find out what the Creeper is because of a random phone call. While they’re
in the diner, an unknown woman calls them on a payphone that happens to be right next to them.
The woman somehow knows who they are and the danger that lies ahead. She tells them that
if they hear the song "Jeepers Creepers," they need to run away as fast as possible.
Only after they arrive at the police station does the audience discover who the woman is:
a psychic named Jezelle Gay Hartman. Jezelle tells them that the creature is an
ancient being that awakens every 23rd spring for 23 days to feast on the living. The Creeper eats
human body parts that then become part of him, finding his victims by smelling their fear:
“Somethin’ it can smell. Somethin’ that tells it if there’s anything inside someone that it might…
like.”
And he’s found something he wants from Trish and Darry.
The Creeper not only cannibalizes victims but is also virtually impossible to kill. Case in point:
Trish runs over the Creeper multiple times with her car.
"You think he's dead?"
"They never are."
The Creeper momentarily appears mutilated and dead. But then a wing sprouts up from
the Creeper and the siblings drive off in fear — they have no clue what they're dealing with,
but they're not going to stick around to find out.
The Creeper follows Trish and Darry to the police station, and rejuvenates himself by eating
prisoners' body parts. So while the Creeper can be hurt, at least in this first film in the series,
he can't be killed. That makes Jeepers Creepers even more terrifying, since the
only way to defeat the Creeper is to survive his 23 days of terror. Darry never stood a chance.
The movie takes its name from the 1938 song "Jeepers Creepers." But the song itself isn't
just the title of the movie - it also plays a significant, sinister role in the story.
After Jezelle plays it for Darry and Trish on the phone, she gives them an ominous warning to run
whenever it's played. They hear it again in their car. Then Jezelle sings it at the police station.
"Jeepers Creepers, where'd ya get those peepers?" Perhaps most maddening of all, the song plays at
the end of the movie during the big reveal. Since the Creeper is
attracted to specific humans and will stop at nothing until he gets what he desires,
the song's lyrics are decidedly sadistic when paired with Jeepers Creepers the movie.
The lyrics, in fact, foreshadow Darry's fate.
Jeepers Creepers has a memorable ending, easily forgotten over time. And, unfortunately,
only one of the two main characters survive. Trish, in a last-ditch effort to save her brother,
tries sacrificing herself, telling the Creeper to take her instead because she's stronger.
The Creeper contemplates her offer but then flies off into the night with Darry. Trish lives on to
tell her story, but Darry perishes at the end of Jeepers Creepers in a brutal death.
Darry isn't shown again until the graphic ending in which his eyes are missing. The Creeper,
as if he's posing for the camera, stands on the other side of Darry and looks through
the holes in Darry's face. The Creeper's eyes have presumably been replaced with Darry's,
disturbingly making Darry's eyes appear to look through the holes of where they once were.
Not only does the Creeper survive the first installment – it ends on an
outright sinister note, with no hope in sight.
A defeated and emotionally drained Trish leaves the police station not knowing if
she'll ever see her brother again. It's fair to assume that she knows she's already lost him
as there's no way of finding the Creeper — and he can't be killed. And, of course, the final
scene of the movie features the Creeper still alive and peacefully working in his new lair,
now with Darry's eyes in his own head. It's no wonder Jeepers Creepers haunts people's
dreams to this day. This isn’t a movie you forget because of how long ago it came out — more like a
movie you forget because the ending is the stuff of nightmares and you choose not to remember.
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