Jeepers Creepers 3 – 2017 – The 3rd film or 2nd?

When I saw Jeepers Creepers 3 just the other day I had absolutely no recollection of the previous two movies in the series. I knew I’d seen them but much more details than that were beyond my memory. That’s kind of the story of my life. I usually remember my impressions of movies but seldom details like the plot… I did remember that the second one talked place on a school bus, which turned out to be important for understanding this one. And I also remember that I thought the first movie was pretty good until halfway through. The acquaintance with the third installment made me realize that I need to re-watch the first two though.

My wife, who saw it with me has a much better memory of plots than I do so I got to ask her if it made sense in the canon. And apparently, she thought it did. But for me, I had to treat it more or less like a stand-alone movie. That worked pretty nicely as well. It could more or less explain itself but if you have the full story in the two first movies it will give it another layer. Some characters have histories that need to be told to fully understand them but it’s not really necessary, you could also treat it like it happened long ago off-camera. Some films are written that way as well so it wouldn’t be too far-fetched.

Controversy

I have read about Jeepers Creepers 3 from time to time on the internet since I came out pretty much. How people refused to see it because it was made by Victor Salva. The history of that is that Victor Salva spent a year in prison after being convicted of sexually molesting a minor during the recording of the film Clownhouse. I find that interesting. I have found the same arguments for boycotting that movie as well, that you shouldn’t see Clownhouse because it was made by him. But the odd thing is that I have never seen the same arguments for any other of Victor Salvas movies. He has made a few and there’s only ever these two that stir up the feelings.

I can understand that you don’t want to finance movies or music done by certain people. Sometimes I have the same feeling when it comes to music. I would not buy and contribute to the finances of Gary Glitter or R Kelly but I won’t rule out listening to them if I already own the material. On some level, you should separate the art from the artist. I try to do that and I won’t ignore films by Roman Polanski or Woody Allen, and not Victor Salva.

Basic Plot

The basic plot in Jeepers Creepers 3 is about a creature coming to life to feed once every 23 years and feeds for 23 days until the next time. Guess what? 23 years have passed since the last time. This creature is now out on a killing spree again. Compared to what I remember from the first two movies I think this creature has far more screen time here. There is also quite a lot more humor than I remember. There’s nothing wrong with that. You can find similar clishé humor in some of the sequels to Friday the 13th for instance. Or some of the later sequels to A Nightmare on Elm Street. There might not be oneliners here but the situations are sometimes designed to make us laugh and some of the events are so typical to the genre that we cannot help but smile.

There are some nice cool kills and some other scenes that are really good. But there are also some scenes that could award this a Razzie if it were a big enough title. There’s overplaying deluxe by some of the actors but most of the time it’s pretty realistic. I think it’s a decent movie altogether. It’s certainly not the best monster movie I have seen but good enough to be entertaining. And pay attention to the last few scenes. Then you will realize if this is in fact the 2nd or 3rd movie in the storyline. Spoiler alert: it’s the 2nd.