It stars Gina Philips and Justin Long as siblings returning home for spring break who encounter a violent truck driver portrayed by Jonathan Breck.

It filmed in various towns in Florida starting in August 2000 after Salva convinced the studios to cast Phillips and Long with the help of executive producer Francis Ford Coppola, who had previously financed his 1989 directorial debut.

They later stumble on the same truck parked next to an abandoned church with the driver dumping what appears to be bodies wrapped in blood-stained sheets into a large pipe sticking out of the ground.

However, they receive a cryptic warning call from a mysterious woman who predicts their imminent danger, mentioning a future encounter with a cat lady and playing the song "Jeepers Creepers", suggesting that one of them will meet a terrifying fate while hearing it.

The police escorts them back to the church, but learns it has been set on fire, destroying any potential evidence, and is brutally attacked and killed by the truck driver, leaving Trish and Darry in shock as they witness the carnage.

Trish repeatedly runs the driver over with her car, but she and Darry are left horrified as a giant wing tears through its trench coat.

In 1990, Coldwater, Michigan, siblings Ray and Marie Thornton witnessed DePue, who had already caught their attention after quickly driving past them moments prior, disposing of a blood-soaked blanket behind an abandoned schoolhouse.

[12] The episode's reenactment of events, and details contained throughout, such as a license plate game that the Thorntons played, were deemed similar to the opening scenes of the film.

[13] While writer and director Victor Salva has not confirmed whether the film took inspiration from this case,[13] he said the beginning was based on "a true story that I was told, only it was an elderly couple, and they went back to this pipe to see what he was throwing down there.

[16] Some readings of the film found the Creeper to share characteristics with Norman Bates in Psycho (1960), Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), characters inspired by serial killer Ed Gein.

[19] The entire sequence was storyboarded by Brad Parker in preparation for the shoot but, due to an unforeseen budget cut of $1 million, it had to be removed and rewritten.

[18] Salva wanted the film's defining moment to be the reveal that the Creeper was not human and, to do so, kept the character mysterious throughout the first half by re-writing certain scenes, going against the advice of agents, managers, and established directors.

As a result of the successes of the 1999 films The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense, Salva received four offers from interested studios within two days of completing the script.

United Artists agreed to finance a quarter of the film's $10 million budget, with Germany's Cinerenta-Cinebeta and Cinerenta Medienbeteiligungs KG supplying the rest.

[23] Jeepers Creepers was made years after Salva served prison time (he was released in 1992) for sexually abusing a child actor during the production of Clownhouse.

[8] Coppola convinced American Zoetrope to forgo casting A-list actors in the lead roles in favor of the relatively unknown Long and Philips.

[15] The role for the Creeper was written specifically for Lance Henriksen, who Salva had worked with on The Nature of the Beast and Powder (both 1995), but he dropped out of the project.

School officials expressed concern after learning of Salva's status as a convicted sex offender, and alleged plans to have students visit the set or serve as interns, which an on-set publicist disputed, were abandoned.

[34][35] Salva called the filming process "grueling" because they had to work during the summer, facing heat waves and high temperatures.

Due to the low budget, the art department's cafeteria was also used during filming and only a few fake bodies were made to appear in the Creeper's lair.

[37] All music is composed by Bennett SalvayJeepers Creepers premiered at the München Fantasy Filmfest in Germany,[38][39] and at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Canada on July 28, 2001.

[46] Jeepers Creepers was released on DVD by MGM Home Entertainment on January 8, 2002,[47] featuring two viewing options for viewers: standard or widescreen.

[48] On September 11, 2012, the film was released on Blu-ray by MGM and 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment, containing all of the same features from the DVD.

[54] The film was able to hold the record until the release of its sequel, Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003), which made $18.3 million on its own Labor Day weekend.

Stephen Holden, from The New York Times, said that once the Creeper was revealed, the film "surrenders its imagination to formulaic plot filler".

Club, Nathan Rabin wrote that the film "begins promisingly with an economical first half [...] but once its monster takes center stage, Jeepers Creepers heads downhill in a hurry.

"[66] From BBC News, Nev Pierce called it an "unsettling, gory, but intelligent horror flick", and compared it positively to Scream (1996).

[72] At that same ceremony, Brian Penikas was nominated for Best Makeup/Creature FX for his design of the Creeper but lost to the KNB EFX Group for their work on Thirteen Ghosts.

[78][79] In 2015, after Salva shared his intentions in making a film focusing on the return of Gina Philips as Trish Jenner,[80] Jeepers Creepers 3: Cathedral was officially greenlit.

[84] A reboot, titled Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, written by Sean Michael Argo and directed by Timo Vuorensola, was released by Screen Media Films on September 19, 2022.