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Justin Long Prepares for the Best and Worst in Jeepers Creepers

© Heather Wadowski

While actor Justin Long may not be a household name just yet, his face is familiar to millions of people across the world thanks to his reoccurring role as Warren Cheswick on the NBC sitcom "Ed" and his role in 1999's "Galaxy Quest." Now, this young actor is taking on his first starring role in MGM's "Jeepers Creepers," this summer's teen horror flick that Long hopes viewers will find more real that its predecessors. "The thing that truly separates "Jeepers Creeper" from those other teen horror movies is the fact our film trusts the fact that it's scary," Long says. "It doesn't ride on satire and tongue-in-cheek dialogue like those other teen horror genre films. It maintains a sense of realism."

In "Jeepers Creepers," Long plays Darryl, a college student whose in the middle of a road trip back home with his sister Trish (played by Gina Philips) when they unleash an ambiguous, blood-thirsty thing (which isn't revealed until half way through the film) that chases the them on their drive. Now, Darryl and Trish aren't just racing home to get away from school, they are racing for their lives.

"The plot is pretty straight-forward," Long laughs. "The studio wants to keep it as secretive as possible, so while it may sound cheesy it really is scary. They keep playing that old song 'Jeepers Creepers' too to keep the audiences even more on the edge of their seats."

Although Long has never had a sister, he says that he imagines the relationship would be something like the one he shared with his co-star Philips. Since the two made a pact not to meet with the man who plays the creature in order to make their fear seem more real, it was easy pretending that she was his sister thanks to the amount of time the two spent together. Long hopes that their real-life bond will resemble a sibling relationship and come across on screen.

"Certain things in a film must be inherent other than one's lines," Long believes. "Characters just have to have a dynamic between one another or else the movie is lost without it."

Developing a strong relationship with his onscreen sister wasn't the only thing Long did to get a feel for his character. Long admits that he studied numerous horror films after he learned he got the role, including "Aliens" and "Psycho." Long used these films to help him prepare for the ranges of emotion he knew he would undergo throughout the course of the film's shoot.