Jeepers Creepers 3

The Jeepers Creepers saga comes to a close with this hopelessly ineffective and thoroughly tedious entry, with the narrative, which is set between the first and second installments, following a team of grizzled Creeper hunters as the attempt to track down and kill Jonathan Breck’s horrific antagonist. (There’s also an emphasis on the exploits of several bland teenagers and their ongoing efforts at avoiding the Creeper’s deadly clutches.) It becomes clear fairly early on that Jeepers Creepers 3 has more in common with its most recent predecessor than with the original film, as the movie, which generally progresses at a serious crawl, focuses upon a series of barely developed, infuriatingly generic characters that remain impossible to root for and sympathize with throughout. Filmmaker Victor Salva delivers a narrative rife with half-baked elements that contribute heavily to the arms-length atmosphere, with, especially, Salva’s inability (or refusal) to even partially flesh-out the aforementioned (and initially promising) Creeper hunters certainly standing out as the film’s most obvious missed opportunity. The movie, then, only grows less and less interesting as it slowly progresses, and although Salva has peppered the proceedings with a very small handful of attributes (eg the choice to set the picture in the daytime is pretty intriguing, admittedly), Jeepers Creepers 3 is ultimately unable to capture even hint of the magic (and competence) that defined the 2001 original film (and, worse yet, it forces one to look at that movie in an entirely new and far more skeptical light).

* out of ****