23 Years Later, and I Wish He’d Stayed Asleep
Every 23 years, the Creeper awakens to feed—and this time, he’s not the only one suffering. Watching Jeepers Creepers: Reborn feels like being eaten alive, but slower, and with less style. It’s the cinematic equivalent of food poisoning at a horror convention: cheap, painful, and impossible to forget, no matter how hard you try.
Directed by Timo Vuorensola (Iron Sky), the film tries to reboot a franchise that frankly should have been sealed in a concrete crypt alongside every VHS copy of Jeepers Creepers 3. Instead, what we get is a cursed TikTok adaptation of a once-effective monster story, complete with acting so wooden you’ll be praying for termites.
The Plot: A Festival of Fools
So, here’s the deal: a couple of horror-loving millennials named Chase (Imran Adams) and Laine (Sydney Craven) head to the Horror Hound Festival in Louisiana. It’s basically Comic-Con for people who think Hot Topic is still edgy. Chase is a paranormal geek, obsessed with the Creeper myth, while Laine is the long-suffering girlfriend who has perfected the art of eye-rolling.
She’s secretly pregnant (because why not), and he’s secretly planning to propose (because this script needed something to happen). Meanwhile, our leathery friend the Creeper wakes up from his 23-year nap, apparently furious to discover that CGI technology has somehow gotten worse.
Naturally, Chase and Laine win a contest to stay overnight in a spooky plantation house that’s been turned into an “escape room” because subtlety is for good movies. There’s a camera crew, a tour guide, and a sense of doom so thick you could cut it with a butter knife—if the butter knife hadn’t been rendered in PS2 graphics.
The Creeper: Now With 80% Less Scare
Remember the first Jeepers Creepers? That creepy truck, that eerie sense of dread, that winged demon with a human face who could outstare Satan? Yeah, forget all that. The new Creeper looks like he got his costume from a Spirit Halloween clearance bin and his wings from an off-brand Doctor Strange cosplay.
He doesn’t stalk so much as shuffle. He’s less a monster and more a tired dad at Disneyland trying to find a bench. The film’s idea of terror is showing him in broad daylight while ominous stock music plays, like the director’s never actually met fear in real life.
At one point, he drives his truck again, but instead of menace, it feels like a nostalgic Uber Eats delivery gone wrong.
The CGI: Pure, Uncut Tragedy
Let’s talk about the special effects—or, as I like to call them, Microsoft Paint’s Evil Cousin.
This movie’s CGI looks like it was rendered on a potato using Windows XP. The crows, the gore, the Creeper’s wings—everything has the shiny plastic sheen of an old PlayStation cutscene. The film doesn’t so much show horror as it accidentally implies it through bad compositing.
When a crow smashes into a window, it looks like someone threw a pillow with feathers glued on it. When blood splatters, it moves slower than the plot. You can practically hear the budget crying in the background.
The Acting: Everyone’s Already Dead Inside
Sydney Craven deserves a medal for trying to act terrified while surrounded by effects that wouldn’t scare a houseplant. Her character Laine spends half the movie looking confused, which, to be fair, is exactly how the audience feels.
Imran Adams as Chase brings the emotional intensity of a man trying to remember his lines during a fire drill. Their chemistry could best be described as “contractual.” They’re supposed to be in love, but they look like two people who met five minutes before filming and mutually agreed to hate each other.
The supporting cast is made up of people who either die immediately or wish they had. The only one who seems to know what movie they’re in is Madame Carnage (Jodie McMullen), who chews scenery like she’s auditioning for a Rocky Horror reboot.
The Dialogue: Straight from the Abyss
The script, written by Jake Seal and Sean-Michael Argo, is a symphony of nonsense. Every line feels like it was written by an AI fed on bad horror memes.
Chase: “This place has bad energy.”
Laine: “It’s probably just Louisiana humidity.”
That’s an actual exchange that could double as relationship counseling for the audience. The dialogue is so stiff it makes mannequins look natural. And when characters try to sound smart, it’s even worse: one moment they’re discussing legends, the next they’re screaming at crows like confused toddlers.
The Ritual: Satan Deserved Better
Apparently, the Creeper now has groupies—local cultists who lure victims for him to snack on. It’s a neat concept on paper, except here it’s executed with all the tension of a bake sale. The cult’s big ceremony looks like a bad high school play about witchcraft, complete with robes from a costume store that literally say “Do Not Iron.”
When Laine gets tied up and stabbed in the stomach, it’s supposed to be horrifying, but instead, it plays out like the Creeper’s awkward attempt at gender reveal party. The scene is meant to suggest she’s carrying some dark legacy, but mostly it suggests the director ran out of ideas and caffeine.
The Horror Hound Festival: Sponsored by Poor Lighting
The film’s one unique setting—a horror convention—could have been gold. Imagine meta-commentary on horror fandom, cosplay culture, and obsession with monsters. Instead, it’s just a background for bad extras and worse lighting.
Every frame looks like someone smeared Vaseline on the camera lens. The crowd scenes are clearly copy-pasted loops of people pretending to have fun. And somehow, despite being at a horror festival, no one notices when people start disappearing left and right.
The Ending: Death by Stupidity
In the grand finale, Laine lures the Creeper outside while Chase and another guy named Stu (whose only personality trait is “owns a gun”) drop a giant weathervane on him. Yes, a weathervane.
The Creeper, an immortal demon who’s survived shotguns, fire, and decapitations, is apparently no match for falling farm décor. The movie ends with him being eaten by crows—a CGI spectacle so bad it looks like the birds are unionized and doing the bare minimum.
But don’t worry—the Creeper regenerates in the final seconds, letting out a “roar” that sounds like someone burping into a fan. Because God forbid this franchise die with dignity.
The Real Horror: It Exists
It’s hard to overstate how cheap, lazy, and joyless Jeepers Creepers: Reborn is. Every frame screams “shot in five days,” every scene feels like filler, and every attempt at tension collapses under the weight of its own stupidity.
Even the lawsuit surrounding the movie is more entertaining than the movie itself. When the courtroom drama about making your film is more compelling than the film you made, maybe you should take a hint from your own monster and just stay buried.
Final Thoughts: Burn the Box, Salt the Franchise
Jeepers Creepers: Reborn doesn’t just kill the franchise—it mutilates it, feeds it to CGI crows, and films the remains with a GoPro from Wish. It’s not scary, it’s not funny, it’s not even bad in a fun way. It’s cinematic purgatory: endless, cheap, and pointless.
If the Creeper truly comes back every 23 years, I’ll be long gone, and grateful for it.
Rating: 2 out of 10.
The only thing reborn here is your will to never watch horror reboots again. Hell might raise Cenobites, but this film raises only one question: why?
