Jeepers Creepers: Reborn
SCREEN MEDIAPardon the pun, but Jeepers Creepers is a rich tapestry of a horror franchise that has lied dormant and ill-properly utilised since its debut back in 1999. Making a name for itself utilising practical effects, disturbing but ever so immersive iconography and restraint singular settings for intensity and atmosphere. Nevertheless, led by disgraced convicted writer-director Victor Salva, the franchise has stalled and faltered with issues behind the scenes for years while trying to craft a trajectory to build a bigger and better franchise while also combatting controversial elements behind the scenes. Three films and two underwhelming sequels later, Salva is finally and thankfully out and audiences can only hope Jeepers Creepers is able to get on the correct path with nothing holding it back.
The fourth and rebooted entry titled Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, for the most part, succeeds in getting itself back on the wagon. While it often suffers and surrenders itself to issues of genre convention, it understands what works for its audience and utilises that to create strengths but not with a few issues along the way. Starting with the positives, director Timo Vuorensola and new-coming Creeper Jarreau Benjamin – replacing the original franchise Creeper Jonathan Breck – nail the design, atmosphere and iconography of the Creeper from the original and update such with their original flair while remaining loyal to what fans have been accustomed to. On first viewing, not much will particularly scream out as new, but the viewer is given a chance to see the Creeper in perhaps a different form and health with a blink and missed reference to where it was last seen at the end of Jeepers Creepers 2. It’s the perfect balance of not changing what works but putting a smaller next evolution of a character that felt both spent and slowly underwhelming for audiences. Most importantly, it doesn’t change the dirty, gritty and animal-like quality of the protagonist. It’s gnarled, uncomfortable and gruesome. Exactly the way it should be but due to the smaller budget, there is a distinct lack of ability and showcase that can be executed. Nevertheless, for homage and evolution, Jeepers Creepers: Reborn is on the right track.
Speaking of homage and honouring what came before it – especially the opening ten or so minutes that is beat for beat terrifying excellence – Jeepers Creepers: Reborn re-contextualises, in a way, the story and that reflects the real-world impression of this character based on a more immersive reality. While not giving too much away, in a referential way, Jeepers Creepers: Reborn crafts its mythos as an urban legend based within the franchise itself. In short, everything that has come before this entry is real and those events have had small but strong ripples for people in the surrounding town and murder mystery oficiándoos in terms of murder podcasts, unexplained murder programs, etc. Similar akin to that what David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s 2018 Halloween did with the continuing podcast wave reality grounded in the world of the Halloween franchise. This is specifically effective in the feature’s immersive and atmospheric opening that slowly but surely reveals itself for key-eyed fans of this franchise but equally enraptures the audience for quite a stirring and haunting first impression.
The sad part is that those first ten minutes reminiscent of the haunting opening to the original is never outdone and never comes close to being as effective throughout the continued running time. Nothing, at no stage ever, comes close to first seeing the engraved iconography of the beat-up van intruding the characters on screen nor the Creepers’ ultimate reveals. Granted this isn’t necessarily Jeepers Creepers: Reborn’s fault as any fourth entry in a franchise will deal with saturation and a lacking impact and to its aforementioned credit does inject a uniqueness to said character. Alas, the best way to implement this character is to showcase it as Spielberg did with Jaws: the less, the better. Keep the audience in anticipation of their very own imagination that does the work for the film. Here, there is an abundance of master shots to showcase this main villain. Either because it’s been too long out of imagination or it’s all the film has in terms of budget. Seeing the film, it’s ever as clear it’s the latter but the creatives at play shoot the shit out of it with as many angles as one can imagine.
Alas, this is finally where the topic of budget constraints becomes a major highlight. Setting any feature film in one main setting is a clear indication of budget restraints. Dredd, The Raid, etc are features that highlight the significance of character but are allowed to do so due to lower budgets as an expense of not being able to fully realise a vision. Here, the higher budget would ultimately elevate the Creeper, where the creatives can take it in literal or even physical form, but as Jeepers Creepers 2 provided, isolation can work for the feature in a tense atmospheric predicament, when done in the correct parameters. However, the issue of setting this feature in a haunted house for two-thirds of the running time sadly reiterates obtuse manners of genre convention. Every single aspect of simplistic and obvious genre convention in the horror format is here in clumps. Damsel in distress, faux shocks, faux twists, jump scares, and so on. The feature also strangely repeatedly uses a diegetic sound design of a revamped Jeepers Creepers song that was very loosely utilised in the first film. Yet here, the dynamic is used three or even four times for the Creeper to interact with the Vinyl record to play this song, midst murder spree or eating fest. The question is, what for? Firstly, it over utilises a dynamic in what feels both silly and repetitive, which exacerbates the scene each and every time, and secondly, the impression to cause uncomfortability misses the mark by quite a hefty margin. Alas, the variations of the techniques in such a tighter atmosphere of setting are thus heavily relied upon to give the feature energy and a constant state of flux and momentum, so the audience sees these not only in obvious fashion but in repetitive form. The problem is, is that these very techniques are ever so common and utilised for fans who indulge in this form of genre and thus Jeepers Creepers: Reborn never breaks the mould of form or format to find individualism or uniqueness.
The viewer also has the issue of casting; this is a feature set in the US but is shot in the UK with British performances and the result is an incredibly misaligned prospect of butchered US accents brooding with British tongue. Not one performer, such as Sydney Craven and Imran Adams, can hide the naturalised version of said tongue and it raises its’ ugly ahead in the most awkward and emotive sequences that catch the attention of the viewer – not necessarily destructive of a viewing – but nevertheless, for a few seconds it catches the attention. Rinse and repeat in every major set-piece and the viewer repeatedly has this subconscious feeling of something off, and once it becomes obvious, it does verge on annoyance. Specifically with Craven, who has one influential moment in which she features but the actress just can’t quite hit that emotional height the scene demands. While her on-screen chemistry with Adams is arguable at best, with very little emotive core being brought from either side, Adams also lets the side down in mustering emotional courage and immersion to his characters plight, specifically when more twists and turns are revealed.
It does feel harsh to critique a fourth feature to the extent that has been done in the above analysis. The same cannot be said for the likes of something similar akin to Death Race Anarchy, for example, another differing fourth entry into its own strange canon. However, Jeepers Creepers as a franchise has so much potential to exist and flourish. Nevertheless, in a stacked out shelf of horror enthusiasts' DVD shelves or streaming libraries, there is no merit to flatter the ordinary and predictable. What is more heartbreaking is that there are ample chances to elevate or streamline the format with great existing material. Why not continue the story of the opening with two elderly protagonists on the run, or have an eighty-minute car chase? This franchise has no excuses to brood something unique to the character or genre and here, while it definitely is on the right track is expected to deliver something more than an average experience, and no even a half hearted attempt at a confusing and quite dim-witted sequal-bait final sting can even muster the courage to want to continue these character arcs and overall story.
