2) Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Jeepers Creepers is a film of two halves. The first half of writer-director Victor Salva’s movie is a disturbing and genuinely scary sequence, in which two siblings – played by Gina Philips and Justin Long – travel by car along deserted Florida highways, going home from college. They encounter an old rusty truck, whose driver is obscured from view, and it tries to run them off the road before taking off ahead. Shaken, the pair press on until they spot the dangerous truck parked next to an old church. Slowing down, they notice a man sliding what seems to be a corpse out of the truck, and depositing it down a pipe. The driver spots them and gives chase, but loses them.
The brother and sister team return to the church to investigate the pipe, and find that it leads to a chamber containing many mutilated, badly sewn-up bodies – but when they flee to a remote, local house to raise the alarm, they are again attacked by the driver. As they make their escape, the duo hit the driver with their car, repeatedly running over him to make sure he is dead. And that’s the end of the good half of the film.
As they gaze upon the broken body in the road, a giant wing suddenly rips through the driver’s trenchcoat and reveals him to be some kind of avian monstrosity, which then takes off into the sky. Later they discover that their attacker is known locally as The Creeper. It is described as an ancient, fear-smelling creature that hunts every 23rdspring, for 23 days, to take human body parts for its own use.
The lesson of Jeepers Creepers is a simple and clear one. If your horror movie villain remains shrouded in mystery, but seems to be human, then your film is potentially terrifying. If you suddenly, and inexplicably, reveal your villain to be some kind of fantastical creature – albeit one that needs human internal organs – then your film loses its tension and becomes laughable. Unless you are making a space-horror – like 1979’s Alien – keep your villains real. Otherwise, they’re just lame.
