The fourth installment of Jeepers Creepers wants to function as a reboot of the saga, which by definition should be a breath of fresh air in some direction: introduction of new characters. an ingenious twist or a deepening in its mythology. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work satisfactorily on either of those planes.
To boot, what happened in Jeepers Creepers III is obvious, being, in principle, a kind of self-conscious continuation of part 2. We say this because the hackneyed resource of the metalanguagewhich the Scream saga seemed to squeeze and squeeze so much as to invite others to give up on the effort… but even in this the film is vague.
VIDEO
Preview of Jeepers Creepers Reborn, the new installment of the horror saga that will arrive in 2022
As a starting point we find a flashback to the past to meet a couple who come across the creature on the road, being harassed by it until they are thrown off the road. It is probably the best constructed part of the film in terms of narrative tension and interpretations because the burden and the feeling of almost supernatural harassment are efficiently transferred.
Later we travel to the present, at which time a couple travels to a horror convention. They are Chase and Laine and they both have secrets that are going to end up being disturbing: he wants to ask for her hand and she has discovered that she is pregnant when they discover that the Creeper, a reference figure at the convention itself, is stalking them.
After winning a cosplay contest, they will be taken to a decrepit house where they have to participate in an escape room that will turn into a roller coaster of horrors since it is the place where the Creeper lives.
neither cold nor heat
To a horror movie like Jeepers Creepers: The Reborn You cannot ask for an overly elaborate script or a spectacular staging, but at least a minimum of coherence, imagination, humor or ability to generate at least concern.
The journey that the film proposes to us is as unsuccessful as it is frustrating because it takes itself seriously without having any idea of where it wants to go. Some plot lines are hinted at that could have had their crumb through the protagonist’s precognitions, but they are neither well articulated nor do they go anywhere.
Nor is it a film that represents an interesting addition to the corpus of the franchise for managing to add new relevant information: it talks about the revival of this infernal creature, its hunting cycle and its bloody methods without there being anything really that implies a discovery .
Jeepers Creepers: Reborn – Image Gallery (3 images)
The 88 minutes of footage from Jeepers Creepers: The Reborn they are quite long because the film has little to contribute. It is not so much that it is series B, but that beyond the supernatural threat there is nothing.
It is not even based on the curiosity of “seeing the bug”: it is supposed to have extraordinary qualities in terms of intelligence, speed, strength and can also regenerate and even use telekinesis, but all this is not shown on screen because there is no budget.
Although the actor Jarreau Benjamin he puts his body expression at the service of the Creeper, the tape is so badly choreographed and goes so tight with resources that it seems clumsier and less lethal than expected. It’s not that the visual finish helps either: the editing is especially rushed in the final part, in which everything is resolved with three shots and the photography sometimes resembles that of a mobile.
The unit of time is not even respected: the whole central part of Jeepers Creepers: Rebirth is supposed to take place over the course of one night but through the planks and windows enter rays of daylight that do not correspond.
When in a slasher you are wondering when heads are going to roll (because you get bored), it means that something is not right… so, definitely, it is not going to be a rebirth, as the title announces. Will we have to wait 23 years for a truly terrifying Creeper to wake up?