BEFORE: Justin Long carries over from "Barbarian" and clinches his spot in the year-end wrap-up.
Come on, this is an easy one, even if I have to go back almost 20 years into his filmography. You should have seen this coming. This film's been taking up space on my DVR since July of 2021 and it's really time to clear it. I did dub it to DVD with "Jeepers Creepers 2" but something went wrong with the dub and the DVD just doesn't look right - it happens - so I've kept the clear digital copy on the DVR because I figured I might like to see what's happening in the movie, also this way I get to read subtitles which is always better than not, the subtitles don't seem to carry over to the DVD. I should just go all digital, all streaming all the time but I still like having things, growing a collection of movies that somebody else will have to throw away when I die. Call me crazy. I mean, I know my collection's not going to end up in the Smithsonian or anything but I can look at the 7 or 8 DVD portfolios and the 5 shelves of VHS tapes and think that maybe it was not all for nothing. Just me?
THE PLOT: A brother and sister driving home through isolated countryside for spring break encounter a flesh-eating creature in the midst of its ritualistic eating spree.
AFTER: It's never a good idea to go down in the basement in a horror movie, nor is it a good idea to go have sex in the woods if you're a teenager, or to invite a vampire into your house, we should all know to avoid these things. No matter how they begin, at some point the plot-developing clause "What could possibly go wrong?" gets invoked - and here a pair of siblings just innocently drives home from college, and, well, stuff on that highway goes very wrong.
This film is set in Florida, makes a ton of sense. Sure, it's remote, rural Florida, probably up in the panhandle, but I guess if you go to college in Florida, you don't go to Miami Beach or Panama City or the other popular hang-outs, you just go home for spring break. Kind of like how you maybe don't watch a lot of movies if you work at a movie theater. But jeez, Florida ain't what it used to be, between abortion rights going away and gay rights being trampled on and alligators eating babies and books being banned left and right and Trump storing classified documents at his Florida resort. Makes you miss the old days, with hurricanes hitting the state every season, Cuban immigrants floating over on rafts and flesh-eating creatures terrorizing the highways, chopping off people's heads. I'm sure in no hurry to return to that state.
Man, the "Jaws" formula still works, and it's just never going to let a filmmaker down. You not only don't see the shark for most of the movie, you don't NEED to see the shark for most of the movie, and you're not going to realize that you didn't see the shark for most of the movie. Just shoot around it, and show us the effects of what the shark did, and that's a whole lot scarier in the long run. But you're going to remember the shark after you see it, that's for sure. There is an art to the building up of suspense, after all, even if that came about because the mechanical shark didn't work for many of the shoot days. The result is all that matters. We don't NEED to see the Creeper for most of the movie, etc. etc.
The Creeper has some unique abilities, in addition to scaring the crap out of everybody - he (it?) has the standard super-strength, Wolverine/Deadpool-like healing abilities, and invulnerability, plus the ability to smell fear (who can tell? He might be full of B.S. on this point) and then he can somehow tell if you've got a body part on you that he needs to add to his own body. Wait, is that right? How does that work, what if you're not the right blood type or something? And let's get back to this supernatural sense of smell for a second, because he breaks into Darry and Trish's car just to smell Darry's dirty laundry. How are we supposed to distinguish him from just your regular Florida Man who might break into your car and smell your laundry? What if the Creeper is just a regular creep?
Plus he wears a cowboy hat and a trenchcoat and drives a truck like any regular Florida backwooods muscle-headed redneck, so this is how he "passes" for human, but then later in the movie we find out that he's anything but - he can fly and do all those other things I mentioned, so really, he's a cut above and he will cut you, from above. The psychic lady says that he sleeps for 23 springs (years) then he gets to feast for 23 days. So, he's a cicada, then? A giant man-sized, man-eating cicada? Just putting that out there to see if it lands. And once Darry (who's named "Darry", BTW?) and Trish decide to turn back and investigate the thing they saw, the die is cast, there's no good way out of dealing with the Creeper, now that he has your scent... And you just can't go to the police, because Florida, what good would THAT do when he can just break into the county lock-up and start feasting on the inmates?
Oh, "B EATING U", I get it! That took me entirely too long. It's not "beating you", it's "be eating you"! Really, this should be a NITPICK POINT of the highest order, that a flesh-eating demon creature who only masquerades in human form would have the wherewithal to obtain a vanity license plate for his weird-ass van that would be a subtle reference that later, once he'd run you off the highway, would be eating your body parts. I guess the Creeper just did it all for the luls? Can you seriously imagine the Creeper in line at the DMV or filling out a form to get that exact license plate? Come on now...
We all have our little moments in life, moments when we feel we might really be good at our jobs, despite what the boss says. Moments where we get to shine, feel like maybe we accomplished something after all, that we didn't just waste our time on this planet. Maybe for some people that's the chance to play "Victim #3" in "Jeepers Creepers", and I'm not going to say that's not something to be proud of, it's just not what I've chosen to do with my life. I could still do that, get out there and hustle and get a voice-over here, a stand-in role there, but I'm not your typical actor-looking type, I admit that, and it's a long-shot at best. I'm going to stick with what got me to where I am, where I've got a respectable list of production credits in the IMDB under my hat and I'm also comfortable working in a movie theater at a college and occasionally telling famous people where the restrooms are, or meeting that guy from that reality show I watched, (almost) purely by accident. It's fine, I'm fine, I'm doing OK.
But when they pair me with a recent graduate who's 20 or 21 years old and I mention I've worked in animation for 30 years, it would be great if she then didn't say, "Oh, so are you retired?" Because I feel old enough already, thank you very much, and I don't really need to be reminded that I don't have the whole retirement thing figured out yet, and honestly, with things being what they are, whether I want to retire someday or not won't be the issue, it will be whether I'm able to retire, and probably not at this rate. Thank you SO much for reminding me that I may be too young to retire, but also I'm TOO OLD to start something new.
Also starring Gina Philips, Jonathan Breck (last seen in "Shorts"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Eileen Brennan (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen"), Brandon Smith (last seen in "Bernie"), Peggy Sheffield (last seen in "Term Life"), Jeffrey William Evans, Patrick Cherry, Jon Beshara (last seen in "Bad Boys II"), Avis-Marie Barnes, Steve Raulerson (last seen in "The Specialist"), Tom Tarantini (last seen in "Powder"), William Haze, Kim Kahana, Chris Shepardson, Tim Phoenix, Victor Salva.
RATING: 6 out of 10 cats owned by the Cat Lady
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