For the past few months, there has been enormous buzz, particularly on the internet, surrounding the new film Jeepers Creepers. Even Clive Barker has given the film praise (something he did for The Others as well.) Barker's endorsement is very surprising given that this film borrows quite a bit from his imaginative library of horrific scenes. While Jeepers Creepers has it's moments, it's hardly a return to the great horror flicks of yesteryear.

As the film opens, two bickering siblings (Gina Philips and Justin Long) are headed home from college. During their lengthy road trip, they are almost run off the road by an ominous looking vehicle (shades of Steven Spielberg's Duel are a bit too obvious). Thankfully, they manage to avoid disaster. . . for the time being. Later on, they pass a run down church. To their misfortune, they see the same vehicle encountered earlier.

To make matters worse, they see a strange figure dumping what looks to be body bags down a sewer pipe. In a typical, cliched fashion, Long suggest they take a look, and this is where the real terror begins and another prospective creature feature starts it's descent down the tubes. It is evident by the style in which the picture is told that Jeepers Creepers was made by a film maker with a great fondness for the genre. Rather than satirizing it with a tongue-in-cheek wink at the audience (a.l.a. Scream), director Victor Salva (Powder) has thrown together a weak mixture of just about every successful horror-flick franchise from Nightmare on Elm Street to the Blair Witch Project--with a dash of sick humor for good measure. The end result is a mildly entertaining horror homage that doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

The picture starts off promising. Long's discovery in the sewer pipe is both creepy and frighteningly atmospheric, but then the film seems to lose it's sense of direction. In this genre, audiences don't really expect a lot of Cliff-notes, but Jeepers Creepers is so devoid of logic that it leaves us out of the loop entirely. What the hell is this creature all about. We know what it wants (sort of), but most of the time the villain in Jeepers Creepers does things that seem nonsensical. Every modern monster worth his assault has a back-story--Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees, we've got an idea about what makes them tick. This film offers so few clues about the nature of it's chief creep that you have to fight off a serious case of "who-gives-a-shit."

Salva tries to give us a little more "victim" character development than this type of film usually bothers with. He allows us time to get to know Philips and Long. Long proves to be far more interesting than his unconvincing sister. His wide-eyed look of terror is quite convincing in a goofy sort of way. Philips, on the other hand, looks pretty bored throughout most of the picture. The creature is quite effective. You see very little of him in the early goings on of the picture. Most of the time, he's a strange figure hiding in the shadows. This is effective and what makes Freddy Krueger such a terrifying presence. Alas, as the film progresses and we see more of the beast, by the end he really isn't all that scary, despite impressive make-up effects. Salva attempts to thicken the plot with a psychic (played by Patricia Belcher in an obvious ode to Zelda Rubenstein's character in Poltergeist), this fails completely.

Much is being made of this picture's sick and twisted ending. I must say, I enjoyed it but it took away all sense of terror that Jeepers Creepers was trying to evoke in the first place. In the end, the movie was almost comical. Jeepers Creepers is definitely a notch above recent horror trash (see Valentine). I even liked it a tad more than John Carpenter's disappointing Ghost of Mars. Still, it's going to take a lot more to re-ignite this seemingly dead genre. The Others is much creepier, much more skilled foray into realm of the truly frightening.

By the way, the title of this picture is taken from a song of the same name. The tune actually holds a lot of clues to the events that take place in Jeepers Creepers.