The Jeepers Creepers franchise began in 2001 and its first trilogy was completed in 2017 with Jeepers Creepers 3. And while Sean Michael Argo wrote the story for another trilogy unrelated to the original one – which is supposed to start with Jeepers Creepers: Reborn sometime in September 2022 – we are not going to be dealing with it in today’s article. What interests us today is Victor Salva’s original Jeepers Creepers trilogy that aired from 2001 to 2017, and we are going to explain the chronology of Jeepers Creepers movies.
In this article, we are going to give you an overview of the original Jeepers Creepers trilogy of films, giving you some basic information about their products and the plots. After we’re done with that, we are going to give you an in-depth explanation of the trilogy’s narrative chronology and tell you how exactly you should watch it if you want to get the story completely in order. Enjoy!
Jeepers Creepers Watch Order At A Glance
The Jeepers Creepers franchise was originally created by the controversial filmmaker Victor Salva in 2001 and currently consists of three movies, all three written and directed by Salva, and a reboot movie set to air sometime in 2022. Jeepers Creepers tell the story of a demonic creature/serial killer that wakes up every 23 years for 23 days to hunt humans. The majority of the franchise’s success stems from the fact that it was made with a relatively low budget (a combined $33.2 million for all three films), but has made almost more than five times its official budget (a combined $182 million for all three films, including home releases and rentals). So what is the watch order of Jeepers Creepers?
Here are the Jeepers Creepers movies in order:
- Jeepers Creepers (2001) Directed by Victor Salva
- Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) Directed by Victor Salva
- Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) Directed by Victor Salva
- Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022) Directed by Timo Vuorensola
1. Jeepers Creepers (2001)
The timeline of Jeepers Creepers movies begins with Jeepers Creepers released in 2001, directed by Victor Salva, and staring Gina Philips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck
Trish Jenner and her brother Darry are traveling home from college for spring break. As they drive through the Florida countryside, a rusty old truck follows them briefly and threateningly. The vehicle finally passes them. They later see the same truck parked next to an abandoned church with a man sliding what appear to be bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets into a large pipe sticking out of the ground. The man notices Trish and Darry’s car passing by and tries to pull them off the road.
After escaping, Darry convinces Trish to go back to the church and investigate. At the church, Darry hears noises coming from inside the pipe and crawls inside with Trish holding onto her feet, but ends up falling. At the bottom, he finds a dying man with stitches running down his stomach. After Darry escapes, the two flee the scene and attempt to contact the police at a restaurant. I
n the restaurant, a strange woman calls them on the phone and warns them that they are in danger. She plays the song “Jeepers Creepers”; confused, they ignore her warning. Later, Trish and Darry leave, with two police officers providing a security escort. As they travel, the police learn that the church has caught fire and that all evidence of corpses has been destroyed.
Later, the police are attacked and eliminated by the mysterious driver, who puts the bodies into his truck. After hearing the same song again on the radio and stopping, they witness the Creeper get out of the police car and remove the tongue from the former cop. They leave terrified.
Trish and Darry stop at the home of a lonely old woman and beg her to call the police. The woman obeys until she notices the driver hiding in her yard. She attempts to kill him, but the driver kills her and reveals her inhuman face to Trish and Darry, before chasing them once more. Trish repeatedly runs over the driver with her car, but they are horrified to see a giant wing rip his trench coat and flap in the air.
They drive to the local police station, where they are approached by psychic Jezelle Gay Hartman. She reveals herself as the woman who called them to the restaurant and tells them the true nature of her pursuer: it is an ancient creature, known as “the Creeper”, who wakes up every 23 years for twenty-three days to hunt humans, which it then uses to form parts of its own body.
She also tells them that it seeks her victims through fear and, by smelling Trish and Darry’s fear, it has found something that it likes, but it doesn’t know what. The wounded Creeper arrives and attacks the police station. After cutting off the power, it gains entry to the cells and eats the prisoners to heal. The Creeper is assaulted by the police, but kills several of them and evades capture.
Trapped, Jezelle warns Trish and Darry that one of them will die. Darry demands to know who, and Jezelle looks at Trish. The Creeper finds them but spares Jezelle as she has nothing it wants. The Creeper corners Trish and Darry in an interrogation room upstairs, and after smelling and tasting them, the Creeper tosses Trish aside and chooses Darry.
Trish offers his life for his brother, but Creeper escapes through the window and flies off with Darry. The next day, Trish is picked up by her parents and Jezelle returns home in regret. At the Creeper’s new hideout, an abandoned factory, it is revealed to have killed Darry to replace its eyes with the boy’s.
2. Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)
Our Jeepers Creepers watch order continues with Jeepers Creepers 2 released in 2003, directed once again by Victor Salva. Jonathan Breck reprised his role along with the new cast members Ray Wise and Nicky Aycox.
A few days after the first movie, the farmer Jack Taggart and his two sons, Jack Jr., and Billy, are in their fields on a sunny day. The younger son, Billy, pegs some scarecrows until he notices one of them has moved. When he tries to escape, the Creeper catches him and flies away with him. His older brother and father can only watch as the boy is abducted, screaming.
The Creeper is on the move again; it is a carnivorous, human-like figure with huge, bat-like wings that awakes every 23rd spring for 23 days to eat humans.
Sometime later, a high school basketball team is on its way home from a game and on a lonely country road in their bus, but when the bus breaks down, the Creeper gets in their way. Before the incident, the schoolgirl Minxie sees a figure on the roadside in a vision; it wants to warn her of something. It turns out that it is Darry, who was killed in the first part; he warns her about the Creeper, who is up to mischief in the area.
Since 22 days have passed and the monster has amused itself with the helpless rural population during this time, it tries to grab the numerous occupants of the bus. Bus driver Betty and coach Dwayne get caught first. While the students are holed up in the bus and helplessly exposed to the creature’s attacks, Taggart and his remaining son, heavily armed, go on the hunt for the Creeper.
At some point, they discover the now completely demolished bus. After several of the young people had to lose their lives, the remaining ones join the father-son duo in the all-important fight, which they win with the last bit of strength. But the badly wounded Creeper is not really dead but rather falls back into his 23-year sleep.
Taggart, still looking for revenge for his slain son, takes the now-dormant Creeper with him. In the last scene, a couple of young people visit the Taggart farm. It seems to have become known that something strange can be seen there. For an entrance fee, they are taken to the barn, where the creeper, visibly emaciated but still sleeping, hangs on one of the walls.
Almost 23 years have now passed again, and an aged Taggart waits heavily armed for the Creeper’s early awakening, determined not to let the creature get away this time.
3. Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017)
The last movie in the Jeepers Creepers franchise (so far) is Jeepers Creepers 3. Once again Victor Salva took on the role of a director with a brand new cast staring Stan Shaw, Gabriele Haugh, Brandon Smith
A shuriken flies through the air and hits a wooden pole as a man runs for his life. When the man hits the road, the Creeper falls from the sky and flies off with him, while Kenny Brandon watches from his truck. When he goes out to investigate, he looks up and sees a weapon fall from the sky, followed by the Creeper’s hand.
Twenty-three years later, shortly after the events of the first movie, the police discover the Creeper’s truck full of bodies; however, the truck has a booby trap with spikes emerging from the rear doors and a spear that shoots out of the exhaust pipe.
When Sheriff Dan Tashtego arrives, Sergeant Davis Tubbs tells him what happened and Tashtego informs him about the Creeper and his motives. They rush to retrieve the truck from the Creeper after learning it is headed for the depot. As Frank and Deputy Lang transport the vehicle, the Creeper lands on the crane and cuts the cables. They watch as the truck apparently drives away alone, while the Creeper stands on top of it. When the truck returns, the Creeper kidnaps Frank while Lang is frozen in fear.
The next day, Kenny’s mother, Gaylen, has a vision of Kenny, who was killed by the Creeper; she warns that he will come for what she buried on the property and kill anyone who is still there, including her and her niece Addison. Meanwhile, Tubbs joins a small team that Tashtego formed from relatives of Creeper victims to kill him.
Later, a group of teenagers discover the Creeper’s truck in a field; however, one of them, Kirk, accidentally activated the spear, getting impaled on the leg and trapped. As two of the other boys try to free him, the Creeper returns and kills them both with another spear. The last boy almost escapes from the Creeper, but it discovers that he urinated on its truck and kills him.
Later, Addison goes to town to buy hay for her horse. When she can’t afford it, her friend Buddy Hooks helps her out; she joins him to bring more hay to a plantation house. They find the owner and a couple of workers hiding under the cars; the owner tells them to call for help. Before they can leave, the Creeper kidnaps Addison.
Gaylen remembers clues in her vision, digging up the hand that she found; she touches it, going into a trance. When Tashtego’s team arrives, Gaylen reveals that the hand can tell them about the Creeper; Tashtego touches the hand, being amazed at how old the Creeper is.
Addison wakes up in the Creeper’s truck with Kirk. They try to find a way out, but Kirk sets off a booby trap in the driver’s seat, causing a metal pipe to impale his head. Meanwhile, Tashtego and Tubbs discover the Creeper’s location and leave, along with Michael (who has a mini-gun attached to his truck).
They find the Creeper driving down the road, but when they start shooting, the bullets are deflected and Michael is killed. A small explosive is ejected from the Creeper’s truck and when it goes off, Tashtego and Tubbs’ car lands in a field. Tubbs comes out and tries to shoot the Creeper, but all his attempts fail.
However, before the Creeper can kill Tubbs, Tashtego screams to get his attention. The Creeper leaps into the air behind him. Tashtego shoots it many times with the mini-pistol, but the bullets have little effect and he is knocked down and hit in the head with an ax. With most of the team out, Tubbs retreats.
That night, the Creeper discovers that Addison is still alive, but before it can kill her, she causes the metal pipe to shoot out and impales its head. Addison escapes when the Creeper loses an eye; it tries to use its weapons to kill her, but his aim is completely off.
It tries one last time to hit her with an ax but is run over by a truck. The ax lands directly at her feet and Addison flee, leaving the weapon on the ground. When the truck driver comes out to see what happened, he is killed, and the Creeper, who used the body to heal itself. Addison runs and hides in a field where Gaylen and Buddy find her and the three of them leave together.
Later, the Creeper returns to Gaylen’s house, where he finds a sign that says ‘We know what you are”, along with the hand, and howls in anger. The next day, Addison says goodbye to Buddy before leaving for a high school basketball game on the same bus that is attacked by the Creeper shortly before hibernating her.
Twenty-three years later, Trish Jenner is seen reading an open letter that she presumably wrote on a computer asking people to fight the Creeper when it returns and she vows revenge on the Creeper for the death of her brother, Darry.
The Complete Chronological Order of the Jeepers Creepers Trilogy
Now, as far as the chronology of the series is concerned, we have to state here that all three movies take place during the same 23 days of one year. So, unlike some other movies, where the arrival of the monster is shown through several periods, all three movies from this trilogy take place within one 23-day period during one of the Creeper’s awakenings. The chronology is a tad complex, but we managed to figure it out.
We know that the first movie takes place in 2001, during the first two days of the Creeper’s most recent awakening. This is the beginning of the main narrative. The second movie, as is explicitly stated, takes place during the last two days of the feeding, during the same year, so it is a true sequel to the first movie. And now we come to the final movie, which is set somewhere in between. As the plot reveals, the movie is set right after the first movie, so it is a sequel to Jeepers Creepers, but it is not a sequel to Jeepers Creepers 2, since it’s set before the events of that movie.
The basic Jeepers Creepers timeline thus looks like this:
- Jeepers Creepers, 2001, 1-2 days of feeding
- Jeepers Creepers 3, 2001, 2-5 days of feeding
- Jeepers Creepers 2, 2001, 22-23 days of feeding
But, this is not all we have to talk about. Namely, the second and the third movies have some additional flashbacks and epilogue scenes that expand the timeline. In Jeepers Creepers 2, there is an epilogue scene set in the future, that shows an aged Taggart waiting for the Creeper to reawaken, as almost 23 years have since his last awakening in 2001; this would put the scene somewhere in 2024.
As for Jeepers Creepers 3, the movie has one flashback scene and an epilogue scene. The flashback scene is set sometime during the Creeper’s previous spree, meaning that it is set sometime during 1978. As for the epilogue involving Trish, the exact date is unknown, but based on the context and the known timeline, it is set sometime after the movie itself and certainly some time before the Jeepers Creepers 2 epilogue.
Based on all of these facts, the full chronology and the exact chronological watching order are as follows:
- Jeepers Creepers 3 (intro/flashback scene set in 1978.)
- Jeepers Creepers (set in 2001)
- Jeepers Creepers 3 (set in 2001)
- Jeepers Creepers 2 (set in 2001)
- Jeepers Creepers 3 (epilogue scene exact year unknown)
- Jeepers Creepers 2 (epilogue scene set in 2024)
As for Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, it remains to be seen how it will fit into the timeline, since we don’t actually know whether we’re going to see a reboot or a continuation of the story unrelated to the original narrative, but set within the same timeline.
