Review: Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017)

“Alright, you son of a bitch!”
– Sheriff Dan Tashtego

SYNOPSIS: Sheriff Dan Tashtego and a team of creeper hunters enlist the help of officer Davis Tubbs to help stop the monster’s eating spree. – via IMDB

Holy shit, another one of these?! I don’t even know what to do with that! When I saw this on Netflix I was sure that there was some kind of a mistake, but no, there (unfortunately) is not. Naturally this meant that I had to check it out and see how it goes because really, the last one was pretty terrible. In comparison, it was a damn masterpiece.

This movie features more slow-mo scenes than you can shake a stick and and should legally be allowed. I am telling you, it dragged that movie out into that intolerable zone, too. This movie was entirely too long, and entirely too lame. They are still trying to link up these three movies as being part of the same 23 days and all that, but hell, it’s getting a bit long in the tooth now, and it is really starting to jumble the already dodgy timeline. Like what, he drops to his knees, screams and yells and performs and birds of carrion rain down from the sky and they “know what he is” and all that and then he just moves along all hunky dory to hunt some kids on a school bus? What?

Jeepers Creepers 3 is bogged down by a ton of dodgy CGI, so it was certainly not going to be winning any love for me. I HAVE AN ANSWER FOR THE VANITY PLATE! This truck is so smart it probably waltzed into the DMV and ordered a plate. Also kept itself clean and running and reading for Jeepers for when he returns every 23 years. Because really, WTF? It can think for itself? Protect itself? Drive itself? What is this? Never once has it been even remotely alluded to, and then this movie this stupid thing is zipping around and responding only to the Creeper. What on Earth is even going on anymore?!

While we are on a tangent on what’s wrong with this movie, let’s not forget the characters or the acting. It was some next level terrible stuff, and horribly awkward to sit through because they all took themselves and this project way too seriously.

Anyway, apparently the third time is not the charm in the case of Jeepers Creepers 3. The movie feels like it is a century long, has awful effects, no answers, lame action, and a shitty story. Skip this stupid thing. Definitely the worst of the thee, and hopefully they will really just leave this alone now, it’s getting really old.

Review: Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

“Two classes of people? What, the “will be eaten” and the “won’t be eaten”?”
– Buck

SYNOPSIS:  Set a few days after the original, a championship basketball team’s bus is attacked by The Creeper, the winged, flesh-eating terror, on the last day of his 23-day feeding frenzy. – via IMDB

Alrighty peeps, so I am back with the next instalment of this series. Well, where Jeepers Creepers gave us a flawed but entertaining horror, its successor just… misses the mark, and widely. There is just so much more wrong with this than the first, and unlike the first, we don’t even really get that entertainment factor, either.

This movie is also where they started messing with the monster, good ol’ Jeepers. I mean, we all had questions in the first one – the most glaring for me being the fact that this dude hibernates for 23 years and then gets 23 days to feed. In those 23 days every 23 years, he has somehow managed to:

• Learn to drive
• Procure a car he can stash for 23 years (and it still runs just fine and remains undiscovered until he returns)
• Somewhere cough up a vanity plate for said car
• Manufacture weapons
• Preserve the bodies and build a creepy Sistine Chapel type deal (that is also never found)

Like, I have a lot of issues, but those pop up super quickly and without much thought. The Creeper is also less… scary in this one? Like the first it was all about the hunt, about the terror. Like crazy hunting. This one he toys with his victims? Winking and smiling and what the hell? He also suddenly has a barrage of weapons at his disposal? We never saw those! There are also a lot of dodgy looking scenes in this one, and the characters are just freaking awful. The least offensive characters are the avenging dad and his dutiful son, and the outcast kid that people fear for potentially being gay. But then you get the high school students. They all freaking sucked, especially that douche nugget Scott. I was actually kinda thrilled when his racist, abusive ass got hauled off by the Creeper.

It was nice to see Justin Long in a few scenes though, and I can appreciate the movies trying to keep up some form of continuity, having this happen a few days after the first, although I can’t recall whether the first let us know how far into his 23 day spree he was.

Anyway, Jeepers Creepers 2 is not a great movie. It is not the worst, but the flaws are glaring and obvious in this one, and it lacks the campy charm of the first. Still not a bad movie for a cheap flick movie night, so I guess it scores some points there.

Rapid Review: Suburban Gothic (2014)

SYNOPSIS: Raymond has a prestigious MBA, but he can’t find work. He can channel the paranormal, but chatting with a cute girl mystifies him. Kicked out of his big city apartment, Raymond returns home to his overbearing mother, ex-jock father, and beer-bellied classmates. But when a vengeful ghost terrorizes the small town, the city-boy recruits Becca, a badass local bartender, to solve the mystery of the spirit threatening everyone’s lives. – via IMDB

I have been waiting for Suburban Gothic for a while. After watching the trailers, it ticked all the boxes for me for what I would like in a movie, highest up being a little quirky. So watching this while on holiday, I was extremely happy to find that I enjoyed it in execution, too. It is really strange, which might throw some people, but it is handled well. You can see that everyone is having a total blast. The movie wants to be a horror comedy, and like I have complained before, most movies in this genre will forget to do both, and focus on one. That was certainly the case here, once again, when all the focus went with the comedic side of things. There was cheese laced throughout this, but it worked (in my opinion) and I had fun – Suburban Gothic managed to be hilarious, even though there were one or two hiccups along the way in terms of pacing. There was so much bizarre stuff going down, and I can honestly say that I detested Ray Wise’s Donald. A seriously reprehensible man, even though I understand the stereotypes of characters were grossly deliberate and overblown. The biggest sell for me on this film was, undeniably, Matthew Gray Gubler. He is just awesome, and he can do peculiar and eccentric so well. One cannot miss that the movie was shot on a budget,  but all things considered I think they did they best they could with it, and it never got to that ridiculously dodgy effects part (though don’t get me wrong, some were so cheesy you had to laugh). Remember, if the story is good for me, I am not too concerned about the effects. Dennings and Gubler managed to work well together, and it was enjoyable to watch them strut their stuff. I think the characters and their antics are far more entertaining to watch, and take front and centre when it comes to the film – the horror and ghosts took a backseat, and I was fine with that. Richard Bates Jr handles his material very well and makes it work, flaws and all. This movie knows what it is, and sticks to that most of the time. The characters were so crazy here, and everything was done in the extreme. Obviously I liked it, and so did my other half, but I think this movie just might be too odd and out there for most people, but that is alright – a little gem for us crazies then 😛