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I watched Jeepers Creepers the other night. A surprisingly solid horror flick with some real scares and great twists. Up until the last half hour. That's when one of the most common and infuriating horror cliches ever reared its ugly head: The old psychic lady whose only purpose is to explain every minute detail about the horrific events occuring. I thought this ridiculous crutch was retired about ten years ago. Starting with the gypsies in old '30s flicks and culminating in the late '80s-early '90s these characters where used as a standby for bad writers  to tie everything into a neat package. Maybe every detail doesn't need to be known. It's what you don't know that's really scary.

Well, when you know what Jeepers is REALLY about, the character sort of makes sense. Look at the plot in a nutshell:

Once upon a time, a couple of kids met a bad man who was doing bad things. They told on him. They told older people and they told the police. But it didn't help. The bad man killed everyone who got in his way and made the kids VERY SORRY. The moral of the story: Don't tell.

If a convicted child molester--like, say, the director--wanted to make a "teaching aid" in order for him and his "friends" to not have to waste time and money on microwaving rabbits in order to keep their victims quiet, this would be perfect.

...Wouldn't it?

How's THAT for really scary?

I'm not even gonna get myself goin on this pile of dung. How I wish I never saw this! Then a couple months later I saw the even more infuriating Ginger Snaps. I gotta start being more cautious with my viewing.

The psychic woman wasn't the only tired old cliche.

This story started with all kinds of possibilities, and basically abandoned all of them in favour of a very disappointing chase with a very traditional looking demon. Yawn.

It would have been much better if they'd used more of the old church and the cave, explored some of the history of that site, and made the monster a bit more human (not too human of course).

If I want to see young people chased down the highway by a killer, I'll watch The Hitcher, or even the more recent Joy Ride, which is a Hitcher rip-off, but a good one. Jeepers Creepers just flat-out sucks.

> The Hitcher

I can't get my wife to watch anything with Rutger Hauer in it after she saw that one

Well, I liked it.  It actually does start out as an interesting horror movie, but then it also degenerates into a cheese-fest at the end.  But by that time the audience I saw it with was too busy yelling at the screen to care.

I also thought the ending was a bit abrupt.  Just kind of stopped.

Not bad, but not something I really feel the need to watch again.

Microwaving rabbits?

I loved the first hour or so- the way scares where generated with slow reveals instead of jump scares. Like when they see the monster dump the body or whenever we see his freaky truck driving in from the distance. Those are more real-feeling, like somehow that sort of thing has happened to me. But the ending...geez. The entire ending hindered  on the old psychic, a character we'd only known about ten minutes, and the fact that sometimes she's wrong. Come on! The story started and carried one way then ended in a completely different way. It's as if the writer got tired and just finished the thing, not caring how well he resolved it.

I watched it on a theatre and just loved the beginning. ¡At last a movie where everything seemed possible! However I started to loose interest when the murderer became visible. Anyway, it is not a dissapointing movie. Despite the merntioned lack of interest, I have to admit Victor Salva's direction is extremely effective, and so are some of the plot twists, such as when the couple of youths find that wacky old woman who lives with tons of cats. It also more imaginative than the usual teen horror flick, and its only flaw is being so irregular.

Favourite scene: The girl repeately running over the monster with the car. That was creepy!

The parts I liked were that things (for the most part) didn't just magically happen. When they told the police about the cave/cellar with the bodies, I expected the typical "We DID check it out and there's nothing there." line. I was pleasantly surprised when the killer burned it to get rid of the evidence. And how the cops didn't automatically assume the kids were behind everything.