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Film: Jeepers Creepers III
Year: 2017
Director: Victor Salva
Writer: Victor Salva
Starring: Stan Shaw, Gabrielle Haugh and Brandon Smith
Review:
This film begins showing a tree with birds in it and they start fly away. We then get an image of a ninja star that is crudely made flying through the air. A man is fleeing from it and he goes into the road. A truck stops for him and the driver watches as the man is grabbed by something. He is taken into the air. This is done by the Creeper, played by Jonathan Breck once again. The man in the truck is played by Jordan Salloum. A machete falls and lands on the hood, straight down. He then looks up and a hand is falling down toward him.
We are then informed that we jump 23 years into the future. There is the truck from the original film that is outside of the police station. This is picking up where the first film ended. The police are waiting for a tow truck to come and get it, but they have gotten the back door open. Inside are bodies. A sergeant comes out to look at it; he is played by Brandon Smith. They also find a weird skull and some heavy material to sew things up. They soon learn it is booby trapped though and one of the officers is attacked by its spikes. Everyone backs up and the doors to the back close.
The sheriff then shows up. He is played by Stan Shaw. He seems to know a little bit about this truck. While they are talking, a spear is shot out of the tailpipe and it impales Shaw’s hat. The truck is then towed away while Shaw is talking with Smith and he is irate. He commands everyone to go after it, he knows that the Creeper will claim it before it gets to impound.
The tow truck driver is played by Michael Papajohn. With him is a deputy, played by Joyce Giraud. As they are going along we see the Creeper land on the back. He has an ax in his hand and uses it to cut the chain off his truck. It rolls off and Papajohn stops. Both get out and watch as the truck rolls past them and goes over the next hill, the Creeper on top of it. It then comes back with its lights on. The Creeper then takes Papajohn while Giraud aims her gun at it. She is paralyzed with fear and doesn’t shoot.
We then go to a farm in the early morning hours. Meg Foster comes out of the house and goes up to a spot where she is met by Salloum. He tells her that they need to flee. That whatever killed him will come to this spot for what he took and that they need to go. The two then get into an argument. We then move to the house where we see Foster lives with Gabrielle Haugh. Haugh sees Foster is arguing with no one. She gets dressed and goes to Foster while on her horse. She tells her that she has to head out.
Haugh goes to her friend’s house, played by Meg Wright. Wright has a brother, played by Ryan Moore. Moore has caught a rabbit and won’t take it out of the trap. This causes Wright and their mother, played by Carrie Lazar, to scold him on this. He just loads up his dirt bike and leaves. Haugh then tells more that she is going to a local farm and wants to know if Wright wants to come to. Wright states that she likes the boy there and she won’t be in the way of that.
We then see that Shaw is getting together a task force to take out the Creeper. One man who is joining up in particular is played by Michael Sirow. He has a mounted chain gun on his truck. He states his father was killed by this thing and he wants revenge. Smith doesn’t understand what they are doing and thinks they’re going to get themselves killed.
Haugh then goes to the farm where she meets with Chester Rushing. He has a crush on her and it is mutual. Rushing ends up riding with Haugh. Moore and his biker friends end up finding the Creeper’s truck. Moore is taken by the Creeper and Haugh is taken when they are outside of a house.
Can Rushing get Haugh back? Can Haugh and Moore get out of the booby-trapped truck? Can the Creeper be stopped? Or does he just have to be waited out?
I need to lead off here stating that the things that happened with Victor Silva, I do not condone or agree with. I watched this film just as a horror film that was released in 2017. I was a big fan of the original film and I found the sequel to be enjoyable. I heard on many podcasts how this film was bad. I still decided to give it a chance. They were right. First off, I don’t see how the story was so good in the original and then expanded on in the sequel. This film takes place in between, but it took me awhile to realize that. I felt that this tells a few different stories that just don’t seem to connect like they should. That is something lacking with this film. I hated the truck being so high-tech with is booby traps and impregnate armor, it felt unrealistic. This film is billed as going more in-depth to the Creeper’s origins, which we get nothing of. It is also billed that Gina Phillips is in the film, which she is only at the very end. This film is hinting at another sequel, but I’m not sure if that will happen now. The ending was as pointless as most of the film. They also make the Creeper seem inept in this film, which I don’t see why they would do that. I get it is to make one character taken to live, but all they are doing is diminishing the mystic for such a great on screen character.
The acting in the film was decent at best. No one really stood out to me. Shaw felt weird in his role. Haugh was nice to look at, but I really don’t know much about her character. We really only get that she lived with her grandmother and cousin, I think that’s the relation, and her cousin died 23 years ago. Smith was okay. Foster was weird in this film and it never explains why she can talk to her dead son. It is similar to the 2nd film where the girl sees a dead Justin Long, but she was asleep when that happened. No one stood out and the acting was just bland.
Unfortunately I need to cover the effects of the film next. The bright spot would be Breck and the look of the Creeper. That still looks solid. This film is heavy CGI. I feel that was because of having such a small budget, but this film literally looked like a bad made for television film would see on the Syfy channel. It doesn’t even have a chance to look real. Some of the blood splatters at a distant looks good. The editing has issues as the film never really builds the tension it needs. The film kind of meanders to the climax and I didn’t feel for the characters like we need to. After I figured out where this film fit in, I knew the ending. The score of the film didn’t stand out. It doesn’t hurt or help the film in my opinion.
Now with that said, I would avoid this film. It technically could be viewed by itself, as it has slight nods to the previous two films, but not much. There really isn’t much of a story. It violates some continuity in my opinion and is just a vehicle for two scenes at the end. The acting was bland. The effects were horrible aside from the look of the Creeper. The editing is plagued by poor writing and the score doesn’t add anything either. This is a bad film. I would only recommend seeing this one if you are set on finishing the whole series. If a fourth is made, I’d recommend seeing the last 15 minutes of this film, that should suffice to get you caught up to see that one.
My Rating: 4 out of 10