Jeepers Creepers

Brother and sister duo (Justin Long and Gina Philips as Darry and Trish respectively) are travelling across country to visit parents when a maniacal truck driver nearly pushes them off road.  Not long after that they pass an old church where they believe they see the driver forcing bloody bodies down a chute.  Later on, when they notice the same strange character pass by in his truck, they (or more so, Darry) see an opportunity to head back to the church to investigate whether whoever was being dropped down the chute is still alive and needs help.  Trish is not exactly keen on this idea but goes along with it.  Reaching the church, Darry stupidly slips down the chute himself while trying to see what's down there.  He does of course find out personally - a cave full of corpses stitched together and mutilated and/or preserved.  Managing to locate a way out the perturbed Darry re-joins his sister and they both head to the nearest town to attract help.  That is not the only thing they've attracted, however, because the aforementioned driver is clearly not oblivious to their meddling, or the smell of their fear...

A surprisingly effective horror from Victor Salva, a tangible sense of mystery is built up during the first half or so of the film as the siblings embroil themselves in a troublesome scenario, the gruesome likes of which they didn't at the beginning imagine (otherwise they may have bypassed it quite voluntarily!).  The mystery element has been dampened somewhat by sequels but that shouldn't take away what was achieved here at the time (2001).  'The Creeper' himself (a mute Jonathan Breck, who would appear in the role for all three of Salva's Jeepers Creepers outings) is a fantastically macabre creation, part slasher villain, part supernatural monster, he is concealed/revealed to just about the right extent and at the right pace to keep him suitably scary.  He also has a nasty habit of consuming body parts to provide himself with physical functionality (shades of Dr Freudstein from the legendary House by the Cemetery perhaps), as well as sniffing the fear of others, amongst other habits.  Overall, Jeepers Creepers has stood up well over the couple of decades since its original release.

My copy is part of an MGM/Fox double bill Blu-ray with Jeepers Creepers 2, imported from the US.  The film is presented reasonably well, with grain visible, at 1.85:1 and backed with a DTS 5.1 audio track that is quite strong.  Extras-wise, the disc for the first film aped its previous release(s), while the encoding locks it to region A (US).  There has since been a superior release of the first film in the UK from 101 Films, essentially porting the 2016 Scream Factory edition.