There are four Jeepers Creepers films: the 2001 original, Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003), Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) and the soft reboot Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022). Release order and story order are not the same, because the third film slots in between the first two. Below you’ll find both orders, a spoiler-free rundown of each film with an honest scare rating, and which entries are worth your night.
The Jeepers Creepers films at a glance
The franchise is small, but it has a tangled history. The first three films come from writer-director Victor Salva and star Jonathan Breck as the Creeper. Reborn drops both and starts fresh with a new team. The table covers the basics for each film.
| Title | Year | Director | Subgenre | Scare level | Runtime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeepers Creepers | 2001 | Victor Salva | Road horror / creature feature | 4/5 | 90 min |
| Jeepers Creepers 2 | 2003 | Victor Salva | Siege / creature feature | 3/5 | 104 min |
| Jeepers Creepers 3 | 2017 | Victor Salva | Creature feature | 2/5 | 100 min |
| Jeepers Creepers: Reborn | 2022 | Timo Vuorensola | Meta slasher / reboot | 2/5 | 88 min |
The first two were theatrical studio releases from United Artists and MGM, with Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope behind them. The 2001 film opened at number one over Labor Day weekend and set a record for that holiday frame that held for years. The third film was a much smaller affair, and Reborn was an independent UK-shot production.
Release order vs story order
If you want to follow the Creeper’s single 23-day feeding spree as one story, watch in story order. On a first viewing, watch in release order, because the 2001 film sets up everything the third one assumes you know.
| Release order | Story order | Where it sits in the timeline |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Jeepers Creepers (2001) | 1. Jeepers Creepers (2001) | Early in the Creeper’s 23-day cycle |
| 2. Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) | 2. Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) | Picks up right after the first film |
| 3. Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) | 3. Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) | The final days of the same cycle |
| 4. Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022) | 4. Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022) | Present day, standalone |
Jeepers Creepers 2 takes place on the last days of the Creeper’s feeding period, and the third film was written to fill the gap. So the Salva trilogy actually covers one stretch of spring, with the second film as the chronological finale. Reborn doesn’t lean on any earlier plot thread. It treats the Creeper as a known legend in a present-day setting, so you can watch it cold.
Who (or what) is the Creeper?
You don’t need a lore primer to enjoy the original, but the rules explain a lot about how the series works. The Creeper is an ancient winged creature that wakes every 23rd spring and feeds for 23 days. It picks victims by smelling fear on them. It eats body parts to rebuild its own, so if it likes your eyes, it takes your eyes. Then it disappears again for another 23 years.
That cyclical, almost mythic setup puts it closer to Pennywise the dancing clown than to Michael Myers. Michael is a man in a mask who keeps coming. The Creeper is a thing with a schedule and an appetite.
| Creeper rule | Where it’s established |
|---|---|
| Feeds every 23rd spring, for 23 days | Jeepers Creepers (2001) |
| Chooses victims by the smell of their fear | Jeepers Creepers (2001) |
| Rebuilds itself by eating matching body parts | Jeepers Creepers (2001) |
| Can fly and heal from severe wounds | Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) |
| Hints of a wider backstory behind its truck and origins | Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) |
The title comes from the 1938 standard “Jeepers Creepers” by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, first sung by Louis Armstrong in the film Going Places. In the 2001 film, hearing the song on the radio is a warning sign. It’s a brilliant bit of mood-setting, turning a cheerful old tune into something that makes your shoulders tense.
A note on the director
Before you start, you should know about the man who made the first three films. Victor Salva was convicted in 1988 of sexually abusing a child actor on the set of his earlier film Clownhouse, and he served time in prison. This is a matter of public record, and it has come up again with every Jeepers Creepers release since 2001.
Some fans skip the Salva films entirely for that reason. Others separate the work from the director, or watch films they already own without paying for new copies. That decision is yours to make. Reborn was made without Salva’s involvement, and his absence was part of how the reboot was pitched.
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Siblings Trish and Darry Jenner (Gina Philips and a young Justin Long) are driving home from college on spring break along an empty country road. A battered old truck runs them off the road, and then they see its driver dumping what looks like a body down a pipe beside an abandoned church. Darry, being a horror-movie brother, insists on going back to check. The basement he finds under that church is one of the great horror reveals of the 2000s.
The first half of this film is close to perfect. Salva keeps the Creeper mostly unseen, so the dread comes from the truck, the license plate (BEATINGU), and the sense that something is hunting two very ordinary people. Philips and Long have real sibling chemistry, all bickering and in-jokes, so you care when things go wrong. Patricia Belcher turns up as Jezelle Gay Hartman, a psychic with a warning, and Eileen Brennan has a memorable cameo as a woman with a lot of cats.
The film stumbles a little once the Creeper is fully on screen in the second half. Even so, it’s the best-reviewed film in the series by a distance, the only one critics treat with any real warmth, and the one entry you should see even if you skip the rest. It’s rated R for terror violence/gore, language and brief nudity, and it made about $59 million worldwide on a budget reported at around $10 million.
Who it suits: fans of road-trip horror and slow-burn dread, and anyone who loved the opening act of Duel or The Hitcher. If you can’t handle gore, the first 40 minutes are tense rather than bloody, and the grisliest moments are brief.
Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)
The sequel moves the action to the last day of the Creeper’s feeding cycle. A school bus carrying a high school basketball team, its cheerleaders and coaches breaks down on a remote road, and the Creeper starts picking them off one by one. Meanwhile farmer Jack Taggart Sr. (Ray Wise, giving it everything) wants revenge for something the Creeper took from his family, and he builds a homemade harpoon to get it.
This is a different kind of movie from the original. Where the first film was a slow, creeping chase, this is a siege. The bus becomes a tin can, the cornfields become a hunting ground, and the Creeper flies, which changes the whole feel of the threat. The teenage cast is large and mostly forgettable, and some of the dialogue has aged badly. Wise’s grizzled Ahab routine carries a lot of the film, and the set pieces around the bus are genuinely fun.
It was another solid earner for MGM, pulling in roughly $63 million worldwide. Justin Long has a short cameo, which is a nice nod for fans of the first film.
Who it suits: a group movie night where you want a creature attack rather than a mood piece. It’s louder and more action-heavy than the original, and the scare level drops accordingly.
Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017)
This is the entry people search for as Jeepers Creepers 3: Cathedral or Jeepers Creepers: Cathedral. For years Salva talked about a third film built around that “Cathedral” concept, and when the project was announced in the mid-2010s it carried the subtitle. The finished film dropped it and went out as plain Jeepers Creepers 3. If you’re hunting for a separate movie called Cathedral, there isn’t one. The 2017 film is the Cathedral project, in its final form.
The story picks up right after the 2001 film. A local task force pursues the Creeper while a teenager named Addison (Gabrielle Haugh) and her grandmother Gaylen (Meg Foster) get caught up in its path. The Creeper’s truck gets a lot of attention here, with booby traps and hints about where it came from, and Jonathan Breck is back under the makeup.
The making of this film was clearly a much leaner affair than the first two, and it shows. The effects look cheap, the plot introduces lore threads it never pays off, and the scares are thin. It got a one-night theatrical event through Fathom Events in September 2017 before airing on Syfy that October, which tells you how much faith the distributors had in it.
Who it suits: completists who want to see how the trilogy connects. It adds a few pieces to the Creeper mythology, but you won’t miss much if you skip it.
Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022)
Reborn is a soft reboot with an entirely new crew. It’s directed by Timo Vuorensola, the Finnish filmmaker behind Iron Sky, and written by Sean-Michael Argo. Imran Adams plays Chase, a horror superfan who brings his girlfriend Laine (Sydney Craven) to a horror convention in Louisiana, while Jarreau Benjamin takes over as the Creeper. Laine starts having visions, the pair get pulled into an immersive horror experience, and the real thing shows up.
The meta angle, horror fans walking into a horror legend, could have worked. The problem is the execution. The film was shot in the UK using virtual production, and many scenes look like actors standing in front of a video game backdrop. Critics hammered it, and it’s widely seen as the weakest film in the franchise. It went out in cinemas in September 2022 before reaching digital storefronts.
There’s a bit of fun to be had if you watch it with friends and treat it as a riff session. As a scary movie, it doesn’t deliver.
Who it suits: fans who want to see every version of the Creeper, or a group that enjoys laughing at a misfire. If you’ve never seen a Jeepers Creepers film, don’t start here.
Where to watch the Jeepers Creepers films
Streaming rights for this series move around a lot, so treat this as a guide to where each film usually turns up rather than a fixed listing. The first two films belong to the MGM library, which is now owned by Amazon, so they show up on Prime Video and MGM+ more often than anywhere else.
| Film | Original release | How it’s usually available |
|---|---|---|
| Jeepers Creepers (2001) | Wide theatrical, United Artists/MGM | MGM library rotation (Prime Video, MGM+), digital rental and purchase, Blu-ray |
| Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) | Wide theatrical, United Artists/MGM | MGM library rotation, digital rental and purchase, Blu-ray |
| Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) | One-night Fathom Events screening, then Syfy | Digital rental and purchase, DVD and Blu-ray |
| Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022) | Theatrical in the UK and US | Digital rental and purchase, occasional free ad-supported services |
Physical releases are your safest bet if you want the films on hand. Scream Factory released collector’s Blu-rays of the first two films in the US, with commentaries and making-of material that are worth having.
Should you watch them all?
Here’s our honest ranking. The original is a genuinely good horror film with one of the best first acts of its decade. The sequel is a fun, dumb creature feature that works with a crowd. The third film is for completists only, and Reborn is for bad-movie nights.
If you only have time for one, watch the 2001 film and stop there. If you’re doing a full marathon, release order gives you the best experience. Story order only really matters on a rewatch, when you want to see how the third film’s lore stitches the first two together.
Spoilers: how the films connect
Spoiler warning
This section spoils the endings of Jeepers Creepers (2001) and Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003).
The 2001 film ends brutally. The Creeper catches Darry, and the final shot shows that it has taken his eyes, which is exactly what Jezelle warned about. It’s a bleak, memorable ending that refuses to rescue its hero.
Jeepers Creepers 2 ends with the Creeper going dormant before Taggart can finish it off. The epilogue jumps forward 23 years to an older Taggart, who has kept the hibernating creature in his barn and charges people to see it while he waits, harpoon ready, for it to wake up. Since the second film already ends near the close of the cycle, the third film had to wedge its story in between, which is why it plays as a bridge rather than a continuation.
If you liked this
Duel (1971): Spielberg’s TV movie is the purest version of the menacing truck on an empty road.
The Hitcher (1986): a road-trip nightmare with a villain who feels just as unstoppable as the Creeper.
Pumpkinhead (1988): another rural creature feature built on a vengeance legend, with superb Stan Winston effects.
FAQ
How many Jeepers Creepers films are there?
There are four: Jeepers Creepers (2001), Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003), Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) and Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022). The first three form one connected story, while Reborn is a standalone soft reboot.
What order should I watch the Jeepers Creepers films in?
Watch in release order on a first viewing: 2001, 2003, 2017, then 2022. For story order, swap the middle two, because Jeepers Creepers 3 takes place between the first and second films.
Is Jeepers Creepers 3: Cathedral a separate movie?
No. Cathedral was the subtitle attached to the third film while it was in development, and the finished 2017 release dropped it. Jeepers Creepers 3 and Jeepers Creepers 3: Cathedral refer to the same project.
Is Jeepers Creepers: Reborn connected to the original films?
Not directly. Reborn uses the Creeper and its legend but tells a new present-day story with a new cast, a new Creeper actor and a different director. You don’t need to see the earlier films to follow it.
Is the original Jeepers Creepers film too scary for a horror beginner?
It’s a solid 4/5 for tension, but the gore is moderate and most of the scares come from atmosphere and the chase rather than shock. A beginner who can handle a few jump scares and some grisly imagery will be fine, and the first act is a great introduction to slow-burn road horror.
Why is the Creeper’s cycle 23 years?
The films never fully explain it. The 23-day, 23-year cycle is presented as a fixed rule of the creature’s nature, established by the psychic Jezelle in the 2001 film and repeated across the series as part of the legend.