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Jeepers Creepers: Jezelle Gay Hartman - Psychic, Informant, Badass Grandma? - In My Dreams
Aside from providing some tension, information, and giving the plot one final push to the finale, this character is relatively simple and disappointing as a whole. Now before you decide to comment, let me discuss her specific role and actions in the movie and WHY she ends up being relatively disappointing with very little payoff. I’m also going to bring up a few suggestions as to how her character could have been used better.
It’s gonna be a spoiler palooza up ahead so if you care about that kind of thing don’t read I guess?
1.) The phone call:
So the first time we meet Jezelle it’s through a phone call that Trish and Darry receive while waiting for the cops at a diner. She calls to warn them that they’re in danger and what will happen to one of them if they’re caught by the Creeper.
This introduction feels very confused for multiple reasons.
First of all, we’re told that she doesn’t remember/see every little detail in her visions which allow her to have this kind of information in the first place. It gives us leniency in what we are and aren’t allowed to know, thus leaving an air of mystery until the very end. The frustrating thing about this though is the fact that later on it’s implied that she kinda lied about what she does and doesn’t know (expanded upon in number 2). It’s implied that she DOES know who will die and somehow she’s able to figure out when the two will be at the police station for her to meet up with. But if she’s able to see and figure that out then she should also have known when they would have a run in with the cats as well. That, along with the fact that she calls the diner at the exact time Trish and Darry are there, basically make this phone call stupid for so many reasons; because let’s be real: either she calls that diner constantly to try and catch them or she’s got some weird ass spidey sense going on (if she doesn’t actively know when they’re going to be there).
The only purpose this phone call really provides is tension. Later on when the siblings get a police escort and hear an alternative song to the one Jezelle played for them, Darry begins panicking saying that they’re in real danger whilst Trish tries to explain to him that it’s not even the correct song and that they’re fine. Ironically, they actually ARE in danger, they just don’t notice it yet because the action is happening in the background. It’s a nice scare and tension builder, by all means, but it really only works once and could have been alluded to better.
2.) The Police Station:
So as I mentioned earlier, near the climax of the movie, Jezelle finally meets the siblings in person at the police station. It’s here that she expands upon the nature of the Creeper and what their fates will be when he finally catches his intended target. This provides an excellent tension builder because this also gives the siblings the chance to confront her about who it will be that the Creeper chooses. This allows for a proper climax and a wonderful “stepping up” moment for Trish whom tries to bargain with the Creeper to save Darry and it’s wonderful because it gives us the reaffirmation that she truly is the caring protective older sister that we only see hints of throughout the movie.
But as you’ve probably guessed by now, I have an issue with this too.
Jezelle being promoted as a psychic character just feels tired. No one believes her and everyone thinks she’s crazy. Just that one sentence alone makes me feel TIRED of that trope. Now that being said, I do understand the reasoning for it. There’s really only so many ways you can provide information on a supernatural creature, but when the movie recycles the “visions” trope on another character it just feels even WORSE because now it’s cliche in the franchise with barely any rhyme or reason aside from information. Realistically, it would have been fine to not have these bits of information. Everything we were told could have been gleamed from what we saw in the movie and the only real important piece she provides us with is that one of the siblings will die by the creature’s hands. That’s it.
Now i’m not saying that psychic characters themselves are tiring, but the way they were handled in this series itself was. And this will be something I will be discussing further in part 5.
3.) Jezelle’s Last Stand:
So then we go off to the climax and Jezelle tries to buy the kids some time to escape by using herself as bait for the monster. She faces off with him and either she isn’t actually scared or she has absolutely nothing the Creeper desires for himself. He promptly ditches her to head straight for the kids. This paired with the ending where she responds to Trish by saying “I’m just a crazy old lady.” really gives everyone the feeling of inevitability and uselessness. These scenes were the most impactful for Jezelle and can really give us a deeper feeling and emotion than what was probably intended. And this is also where I feel like her character was most powerful.
Jezelle goes out of her way to try and help them because she can’t stand the thought of anyone else suffering by the Creeper’s hands whilst she does nothing. She doesn’t listen to what the others say when they claim that she’s crazy and even puts herself in harms way to try and save the siblings. So the look on her face when the Creeper barely gives her a second look and immediately goes after Trish and Darry is a little heart breaking. It’s like she realizes that she wasn’t even good enough to buy them a few minutes, that there wasn’t much she could do in the end.
And then later on, when Trish confronts Jezelle about her lying about who the Creeper was going to take, that gives us even more heart break. Jezelle was probably hoping that by telling them that Trish would be taken, that Darry would become less scared and maybe make himself undesirable to the Creeper in doing so. But ultimately there was nothing she could do to help, in the end she really was a “crazy old lady”, and it’s in that pain and acceptance of failure that we can feel the most for Jezelle.
4.) Payoff:
This is also why I feel like the use of her character was disappointing and the payoff was too small. Two thirds of her scenes amount to very little aside from building tension and scares and the information she gives is wholly unnecessary. If she had a larger part in the film then perhaps her final scenes would have been even more impactful. Because as much as this movie is about the siblings, the ending really paints us a depressing picture that begs the question of “if you can’t change the outcome, is there even a point in trying?”
Because although we can hear and feel Darry’s terror build until the finale and shudder at the...sight... EVEN THOUGH we can feel the pain in Trish as she chases down the Creeper and is left to face the awful fact that she couldn’t do her job of the elder sibling properly and protect Darry despite everything else she’s done in the movie to protect him, Jezelle possibly contains the most widespread emotion I think that we as humans can REALLY get on board with the most.
“If you can’t change the outcome...” “If you don’t succeed...”
“...Is there a point in trying?”
5.) Improvements:
So earlier I mentioned things such as Jezelle’s phone call, the information she provides on the Creeper, and her ability as a Psychic.
My primary complaints on her use as a character is that the scares and tension as well as information provided were ultimately pointless due to the lack of actual use. The information she provided on the Creeper, being a super old creature, reappearing for 23 days every 23rd summer, and can’t really die due to the fact that he can consume human parts to rejuvenate his body which is mostly why he hunts- All of this could have been provided in alternative ways and really kinda was. Things like missing people cases in the area, the Church of Pain (where all the bodies were sprung up like a mockery to the Sistine Chapel mural and others), and what we see in the later half of the film where Trish runs him over and then he eats cops to fix his parts, all of this was really all we needed in order to learn of the Creeper’s culture and motive. The only piece of information needed from Jezelle at this point was (ultimately) the ending. And even in this I have a simple solution.
One of my head canons happen to be that the close proximity to the Creeper allows for random individuals to have psychic abilities in order to combat him (he’s lived in that area presumably for at least a few hundred years, so if Jezelle lived in that area she could be one of the few who have insight to his habits. This would also be a great explanation for why Minxie was given the information needed on the Creeper.) This paranormal seepage into the world around him would also allow for technology to flicker and react to his presence and in the very first scene where he harasses the siblings in their car (as well as the second time) this could allow for the radio station to skip around and play bits of the song for Darry to connect to the Creeper later on. He’d hear bits in the car the first two times, hear the actual thing at the church of pain via a gramophone, connect it to the creeper when they have the police escort and start panicking, and then BOOM problem solved and we still feel that same terror at the end when it’s playing. No dumb phone call that has basically no real payoff; however Jezelle could still allude to it being Trish later on for the aforementioned reasons.
The only downside to this is that this would make Jezelle’s character SEEM completely unimportant and that’s where I say NAY! Because now that we’re not focusing on dumb attempts to build a one off scare we can actually USE her LOGICALLY. If she can track them well enough to know when to call them at the diner then she can fucking FIND THEM AT THE DINER HERSELF, or just as well, FUCKNG FIND THEM WHEN THEY’RE GETTING ESCORTED BY THE POLICE. Either way, she’s there when the escort get essentially FUCKED by the Creeper and Jezelle with a gun just shoots the hell out of the fucker and Trish runs him over for good measure (or the other way around, or they trade off, fuck it’d still be a cool scene either way!) Jezelle escorts them to the closest police station and THATS when she could tell us about her visions and desire to help out.
This would lead to an even greater payoff with her character because now we can feel more engaged with her (imo). This wasn’t just someone who kinda tried to help and then finally at the last minute decided to come in to still do essentially nothing- No, NOW it’s someone who was so fed up with being unable to help that she gets off her ass and ACTUALLY HELPS. She gets badass granny moments, maybe even bips him a few times in the police station while also acting as bait and is STILL IGNORED AND STILL FAILS.
That would be THE BIGGEST KICK and makes her failure and pain even more palatable in the end. Just imagine it and tell me that wouldn’t be badass and depressing as hell with the same amount of horror aspects built into it.
