Just because a horror franchise is successful, that doesn’t mean it’s any good. We’ve seen countless properties overstay their welcome to an almost nauseating degree over the decades, and we’ve now reached a point where even the audiences who welcomed Jeepers Creepers with open arms back in 2001 have turned their backs on the supernatural series.
The original drew decent enough reviews from critics on its way to recouping its $10 million production costs almost six times over at the box office, but to say that further installments ran the concept into the ground would be putting it lightly, with matters compounded by reboot Jeepers Creepers Reborn landing a zero percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
The forums of Reddit tend to be a fairly forgiving place at the best of times, but you know things have gone south when a reflective thread that begins by stating a one-time fan of Jeepers Creepers recently re-watched the opener and found it “so bad I could barely get through it” leads to virtually every comment and reply agreeing that while there was a shred of originality and flair to be found once upon a time, the quartet simply doesn’t hold up.
Of course, the abuse allegations and subsequent conviction of creator Victor Salva in the late 1980s torpedoed what little reputation the Jeepers Creepers brand had left once it gathered widespread attention, and even those who try their hardest to separate the art from the art struggle to reconcile their feelings on the filmmaker’s past with the work he put on screen, even if it proved to be largely divisive and barely above acceptable as it was.