Jeepers Creepers: Reborn is the 2022 soft-reboot of one of the most iconic horror franchises of the 2000s. It currently sits at zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes — a rating you cannot achieve by accident — and it has fully earned every percentage point of that distinction.

I want to anchor this review by talking about the original. The 2001 Jeepers Creepers remains one of the scariest films I have ever seen. The opening highway sequence is iconic for a reason — sustained, primal, well-earned dread that holds up over twenty years later. The Creeper is a genuinely terrifying horror icon. Whatever you think of the franchise's later entries, the first film stands as a legitimately great work of horror cinema. It deserves better than what this reboot has done to its name.

Because Reborn fails on every conceivable level. The acting is consistently weak across the entire cast. The dialogue is laughable. The pacing is a slog. The CGI is rough enough to actively distract, and the green-screen compositing is so visibly poor that you can identify the seams from across the room. The Creeper's prosthetics — the central visual identity of the entire franchise — look unfinished, unconvincing, and completely robbed of menace. The character that once represented one of horror's most terrifying figures has been reduced to something approaching a costume mishap.

And there is no recovery. There is no moment in this film where some department steps up and saves a sequence. No performance that elevates the material. No directorial flourish that grants even a glimpse of competent filmmaking. Every single element fails simultaneously and continuously across the runtime.

The most frustrating part of this experience is the title itself. Calling this Jeepers Creepers — invoking the name of a film that genuinely scared a generation — is the deepest insult of all. Whatever this film is, it should not have been allowed to carry that legacy. Released with any other name, it would still be terrible. But it would not be a disgrace.

I am confident this film will hold the top spot on my "worst films of the year" list. There is nothing I have seen recently that comes close.

1 out of 10. Hard no on the recommendation. Watch the 2001 original instead and pretend this one never happened.