JEEPERS CREEPERS III on Syfy, Run If You See It (On TV)

Jeepers Creepers 3 came out in September 2017, direct to DVD, but we heard nary a word... and I see why now. I can save you a few minutes of reading to say this upfront...

Don't waste your time! And this, from a guy who loved the first two films of this franchise, I'd say don't waste your time unless you've been drinking heavily. Then you might be OK.

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Despite the filmmaker's criminal past, (I was not aware until now that the filmmaker was convicted of child molestation in 1988) I had enjoyed the first two films. They were paced out nicely, took place mostly at night, and built up the tension wonderfully. That, and the demon/creature was pretty awesome.

Cut to the third film of the franchise, and I'm saying, WTF happened? It's not like different writers came on board, Victor Salva has written and directed all of them. But something has gone horribly wrong of late.

This third film stars Stan Shaw, Meg Foster and a bunch of other cast that couldn't find any other kind of work. But we do have Brandon Smith reprising his role of Sgt Tubbs from the first film. He was one of the cops from the final scenes when the creature ripped the police station apart in the 2001 film.

Yes, this third film takes place right after events of the first film, totally skipping the second film.

But that's the best part of it. The film opens right after the close of the first film, where they find the Creeper's creepy van, and they hope to impound it, to lure the creature back. But apparently this creature has learned how to booby trap his van, and we later learn, is also seemingly possessed.

And it goes down hill from there.

The first half hour or so, we have several groups of folks shoved down... I mean introduced to the viewer. They're all rather fragmented introductions that are just horribly constructed from horribly thin characters.

Then the entire film is taking place during the next day, so our monster is doing it's thing during the daylight hours. There's no tension build up or nothing. It just jumps right into, well, after those long, drawn out intros, jumps right into the monster defending itself or taking victims and collecting them in his booby-trapped van.

There's a reason this film got a 4.4/10 on IMDb and there are no scores on Rotten Tomatoes, but even the community there has it a 43%.

And to be honest, this didn't even deserve to be on Syfy with the rest of their fodder. But I guess it had to end up somewhere!

{ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpzzrqJi6ko }

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