Jeepers Creepers

The opening blends Duel and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as college kids Darius (Long) and sister Trish (Philips) drive home by the backroads and are menaced by an aggressively driven old truck. Barely surviving the ordeal, they stumble across something nasty in the cellar of a deserted church. It's part of the film's appeal that we discover the truth at the same rate as Trish and Darius. As tension builds with bracing economy and ingenuity, a seemingly standard teen-shocker gradually shifts into darker Twilight Zone territory. A stunning climax lifts things to another level, throwing a new, blackly comic light on the whole enterprise. The film nimbly incorporates urban myth and post-Scream post-modernism with sufficient nastiness to sate the gorehound.