Trish and Darryl, sister and brother, are driving back home from spring break. Along a desolate part of highway in a no-name town, they are accosted by someone driving a beat up old truck. After he leaves, they pass him a few miles later and witness him throwing something down an old pipe. He sees them and chases them down the road and runs them off the highway, before continuing on his way. Trish and Darryl decide to go back and check the old pipe, in case someone is hurt and needs help. What they find chills them to the bone, but it's only the beginning. The stranger now has them in his sites, and won't rest until he gets what he wants.

As far as horror films go, Jeepers Creepers wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. It played straightforward the entire time, without any needless joking around. The characters, while at times stupid, still showed just enough knowledge of having actually seen horror films before all this happens. I liked the fact that the two 'good' guys were brother and sister, because that means there's no chance for any stupid love story to slow things down. Their acting was solid enough with Gina Phillips coming out a little better than Justin Long, although neither of them will be winning any awards any time soon.

I did have a couple problems with the story, realizing full well that this is a horror film and some things just aren't supposed to make sense. I won't go into the stupid things these kids do because if they didn't do stupid things, there wouldn't be much of a movie. Horror films are built on kids doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, and you just kind of accept it and move on. What I didn't understand about the whole plot was, why? No explanation is given for anything this strange creature does. Little tidbits are thrown at you like it feeds every 23 years for 23 days, but no reason is given as to why. We're not even really sure what the heck it is. And who is this psychic lady who seems to know everything? Where did she come from?

If you look at past great horror films, there's usually a reason given for why they do the things they do. Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street was burned by a bunch of parents and now enters their children's dreams for revenge. And for good measure his mother was raped by a hundred insane asylum patients. Michael Myers from Halloween went insane and killed his parents and then after being put into an asylum returned to exact revenge on his sister. Jason from Friday the 13th, well, Jason's mother anyway, sought revenge on the camp counselors that let her son drown.

In Jeepers Creepers there is no reason why this creature does what he does. Now granted, all the information we know about Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers may not have been handed out in the first film of their respective series. It's been so long I can't remember where the explanations were given. So maybe Jeepers Creepers is just the first in a planned series of horror films, where each film will give you more information about the creature. The ending of the movie (easily the creepiest shot in the film being the last one) certainly leaves the movie open to a sequel.

So overall Jeepers Creepers is pretty much a straight forward horror film. A couple of kids, a mysterious creature, some side characters that either add tiny amounts of information or just get killed off, and an ending that leaves it wide open for more films. If you have already seen The Others and are looking for a few good chills, Jeepers Creepers isn't a bad way to spend your money.