Jeepers Creepers 2

Rating:
Summary: Good Effort
Review: I am not usually too keen on horror film sequels,especially the gory type.More inclined towards more original,intelligent and the psychological horror genre,like The Others,Blair Witch Project and The Exorcist(minus the pea soup),I did not expect to like Jeepers Creepers 2 at all.But suprisingly, my fast forward remained untouched throughout the film,being impressed by a solid direction, excellent editing, and decent stunts.
In addition I liked the script by original Creepers writer/director Victor Salva, the way it was well contained ,and I also appreciated the cheeky humour (the Creeper's facial expressions hanging upside down while choosing his next 'meal'!)..
I also liked the ending..the elements of obsession, revenge and constant grief,although not much explored, it added a certain depth.
Although the acting from the mostly newcomers was pretty lame, Ray Wise, an excellent underrated actor who was responsible for giving Twin Peaks an invaluable boost, did a terrific job.
So why do I give Jeepers Creepers three marks only?
Well, for starters, after Freddy, Michael, Jason, Leatherface, Pinhead, Candyman, this monster horror genre is over stretched and its style has become very much predictable!
Moreover, my problem with such films is the monster itself.No matter how good the makeup or digital makeover is,I personally can not see but an actor wearing a mask! This is why with the psychological horror/unseen mosnters genre, the imagination is soley responsible for sketching that monster..far more effective and terrifying.
So while Jeepers Creepers is not bad per se,it is still an average film,the type of which you will forget about as soon as the credits roll(as opposed for instance to The Others,the ending of which stayed with me for weeks after watching it!).
I have a feeling that we will not wait another 23 years to witness the Creepers comeback! and I fear it will become a franchise spawning many sequels,but for the time being the two Jeepers Creepers films are worth renting or watching on cable later(and not buying) if you want some old fashioned but average horror films.

Rating:
Summary: JUNK! TERRIBLE, STUPID sequal
Review: The original "Jeepers creepers" had one of the most exciting original openings of any recent horror film I had seen. The movie was innovative, original and very scary. This lame sequal is plain horrible. The opeining defines boredom and the film drags on and on and never even approaches the original film's genuine frightful feeling. The Creeper's freaky truck never makes an apperance, the sog that was tied nto he title and theme never is played and the Creeper siply flies around looking stupid and not scary. The entire movie revolves around a bunch of jocks on a bus, stranded on the road,which alone is beyond lame and boring. None of the characters are interesting, and I felt this was just a lame excuse for MGM to cash in on whatever money they coud gross off this as that studio has had very few hits recently. Don't waste your time with this mess like I did. On a scale of 1-10 I give this pile of junk a ZERO!

Rating:
Summary: Better than I expexted
Review: I really liked the first Jeepers Creepers. It was made for about 50 cents but it was an effective cross between Duel and a monster movie. The sequel is is a worthy effort and has it's share of scares.
The movie starts with a famers kid getting abducted by the Creeper in a cornfield while the kid is hanging up scarecrows. The farmer and his other son watch as the kid is snatched up and flown away. The Creeper appears to have ditched his truck from the first film, and decided to swoop down on his victims and snatch them away. It looks like the higher budget on this film allowed for more flying special effects.
The next victims are a bus load of teens coming home from a football game whose bus gets disabled. The body count begins immedietly with the teachers and bus drivers then the kids begin to argue as to what to do next. Thank god one of the girls suddenly develops a psychic bond with the creature(via dreams) and becomes a Creeper Expert. Apparently if he looks at you, you have become one of his chosen victims(good to know). The movie gets better as the teens start getting picked off, then the farmer from the beginning of the film shows up for revenge. He has hade a harpoon gun and has mounted it to the back of his truck. Let's just say the Creeper takes a well deserved beating, but does he die? We all know the answer to that. It doesnt take a genius to know that the Hollywood greed machine wouldn't allow that. So enjoy JC2(as it will be commonly known as) and stay tuned for the next 16 sequels. Some of which will probably go straight to video(see Wishmaster)

Rating:
Summary: We've moved a notch down the food-chain
Review: It's four days on from the events of Jeepers Creepers, a sleeper hit in 2,001, which saw Justin Long and Gina Philips's bickering brother and sister terrorised by an indestructible winged demon; and Victor Salva's anthropophagic monster is coming to the end of its 23-day killing spree. The creature, being an aerial predator itself, appears to have an affinity with birds: the raggedy-winged corvids clustering about it in the unsettling opening sequence being the first indication we have that the hatchet-faced scarecrow is not what it seems - "A lot of good they're doing", grumbles young Billy, after being bawled out by his Dad (Ray Wise) for not attaching the scarecrows properly to their posts.

Having whisked Billy away, the Creeper next targets a coachload of football jocks and cheerleaders, whom you just KNOW are going to get munched when you hear the boys singing execrably (the demon disables their bus with a shuriken star, gruesomely fashioned from human bone). Actually, 'Creeper's' a misleading nickname; it really should be 'Flyer', since that's how it captures its prey, stooping on them like a hawk to seize them in its talons. Many viewers will be disappointed, as I was, that this sequel sheds no light on the creature's provenance (intriguingly, a third nostril that opens and closes in the bridge of its nose as it inhales its victims' aroma and a wonderful crest of spines at the back of its head that it erects whenever it's really hungry or angry suggest an extraterrestrial origin.)

A strength of the original was that it kept the creature's identity hidden until about mid-way through. This time, however, Salva, realising that the element of surprise is gone, cleverly makes a virtue of a vice; so that the Creeper (again played by stuntman Jonathan Breck) is literally in your face, leering in at the coachload of kids while selecting its next victim (you don't want to know what it does with its tongue). Some reviewers have criticised the fact that Breck's obviously wearing a latex facial mask; but his lean, sinewy physique and abrupt movements create a genuinely creepy impression of watching something inhuman (although endowed, disturbingly, with a macabre aesthetic sensibility: evidenced by the patchwork of cadavers, stitched together in a warped take on the Sistine Chapel, from JC1; and the crude artwork - of humans fleeing unavailingly, mouths open in mute terror - carved into the handles of its knives.)

The kids' acting is competent enough, though disappointing when contrasted with that of Justin Long (as Darry) and Gina Philips (as Trish) in the first film: it was because we'd grown to know and care for them that the original's ending, uncharacteristically downbeat for a horror flick, was genuinely shocking. (Darry re-appears, hauntingly, in spirit form, trying to warn the blonde cheerleader with psychic powers of the imminent danger posed by the Creeper). The sequel's saving grace in the acting department, however, is Ray Wise's grief-stricken farmer, hell-bent on avenging his son (he makes good use of one of the creature's discarded weapons, by the way, in the gripping finale).

And yes, there's going to be a JC3 - unavoidably, considering that the creature sleeps for 23 years before rising to feast again for another 23-days (why 23? Well, I suppose because it's a prime number, therefore off-kilter, like everything else about the winged monster). I agree, too, with the reviewer who said that the Creeper has superb potential as a horror franchise: after all, how DO you kill a creature that can regenerate its own head within a few seconds? Ignore the negative reviews; this scared the bejeezus out of me.

Rating:
Summary: A lot left to be desired....
Review: You know what would have made this a good movie? If instead of a lot of 1-dimmensional characters, a tired scenario, and 1/2-hearted acting, we got a rushed and 1/2 way film. Had this movie instead been an exploration of the origins behind the monster that feeds for 23days every 23rd spring, it would have been A LOT more intriguing. But basiclly we get a rehash of the first film, an exploration of what happens when you get a bunch of people whom don't necassarily like eachother stuck in a small space, which by the way is done very well in a movie called "Cube"(Avoid Cube 2, unless you want another not-so-good sequel).

Oy, now I sound like some dumb critic.! BLECH!!!! I'm not, but seriously I would have loved to see a movie that was equal parts gore and brains, with some smart and fleshed out characters, and quality acting. Is that to much to ask? I mean, maybe they'll make a 3rd Jeepers Creepers, and that one will actually be great. hehe I'm sick of below-par horror films.! Gimme the good stuff, PLEASE!!!!

But, hey, you still may *enjoy* this film, its not all bad, I still enjoyed it, and so did my dad. It did offer some chills, and I did care for a couple of the characters, so that's gotta count for something. :D yay!!!!

God Bless & *Enjoy* ~Amy

Rating:
Summary: 2 stars for part 2
Review: I caught the original Jeepers Creepers on a premier movie channel late one night, and it scared the Holy Horse Feathers out of me... I LOVED IT! After that, I waited rather impatiently for part 2 to come along... needless to say, they should have waited for "once every 23 years" before they did the sequal. There was really no story line, it was a typical teen movie... "HUG, KISS, GROPE, SCREAM, RUN, DIE. I think that pretty much sums up part 2 in 6 words. For the sake of movie goers everywhere, and man kind for that matter... wait 23 years before you bring out another!

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining If You Like the "Creeper" and His Sly "Humor"
Review: So, they made it again, the sequel to the surprise horror hit. Don't ask me if this is better than the first one, because frankly I don't know, But several things are certain about this horror about man-eating creature "Creeper" played competently by Jonathan Breck, and they are; A) the story is more coherent, or conventional: B) more humor is thrown in: and C) the monster is the best thing in the film.

The story is aptly simple; the high school basketball players are going home in a school bus (with obligatory cheerleaders in T-shirt), but they all get stranded in the middle of the two-lane road. The cell phones are dead; there is no help around them; so this means they are in trouble, this time, a real one. And some flying creature is looking down from up above, waiting for the moment to snatch them one by one.

In the meantime, Ray Wise ("Twin Peaks," remember?) is the father with a hand-made harpoon on a pick-up truck, who is willing to hunt down the nasty creature because of the reason you see in the pretty scary opening scene. He and his son are heading to the spot where the bus is, and now, you know the rest of the story.

Victor Salva has quirky sense of humor, I think. The non-descriptive kids trapped inside the bus become exactly "the canned food" for Creeper, who can pick up (yes, he does, with a bit of humor) the tasty ones. Don't try to think about the logics. The film knows what it is doing when Creeper pretends to be a scarecrow (see the poster), as if playing hide-and-seek.

The film may not be scary for this reason -- very sly humors -- but to some audiences like me, it delivers tremendously. If you are horror film fans, you might detect the exact moment some 'surprising' thing would happen. Actually, the biggest surprise is that the monster got another trick or two, sometimes acting like ninja. Well, if you like that kind of surprise....

"Jeepers Creepers 2" does not follow the 'anything goes' formula, in which the creature's identity is quite confusing (truck? winged monster?). Still, I find this sequel is as entertaining, if not scary, as the original one.

Rating:
Summary: The Creeper Will Get You!
Review: Okay, if you are reading reviews based on Jeepers Creepers 2, then my guess is your not looking for heavy drama (i.e. Dances with Wolves), your not in the mood for romantic comedy (i.e. Pretty Woman), and your definately not looking for an arthouse flick (i.e. Magnolia). I would guess you are looking for some cheap scares, a cool monster, a touch of gore, with a dose of suspense thrown in for good measure. Check, Check and Double Check as Jeepers Creepers has all of those! I enjoyed part one, and I thought part 2 added quite a nice touch to the original storyline of the Creeper. I did miss the use of the song Jeepers Creepers that was in the original, but that is a minor complaint. The Creeper is a good modern day monster, and I hope it does become a franchise! The teens are annoying to a degree, but represent more than fodder as in most fright flicks. And I think the lonely country road setting is phenominal, the long shots of the broken down school bus on a dark country road, really give you a sense of isolation. If you are a horror fan, or enjoy creature features of the 50's, 60's & 70's you will enjoy Jeepers Creepers 2. (...)

Rating:
Summary: The Usual Teenage Sitting Ducks
Review: A substantial helping of CGI adds dumb but fun visual thrills to JC2, but the psychological horror lacks the necessary seductive terror that keeps us riveted. Part of the problem is that too much is spelled out for us visually - on that score, JC1 did a better job, teasing its audience without giving its mystery away. JC2 gives us more predictable, albeit spectacular, thrills, but is married to a shamelessly generic, mechanical storyline: a group of photogenic teens stranded in a broken down bus on dark country road and guess what? Something wants to eat them. Like other horror franchises that follow a similar format, the question is who gets picked off next. Will you care? Not really, still, JC2 has its moments. The DVD has some nice extras, most notable, "A Day in Hell, which follows the director through a tough day of shooting on the set.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy return for the Creeper
Review: Set on the last two days of the Creepers 23 day feeding frenzy, only a few days after the original Jeepers Creepers, a re-vitalised the Creeper is out to make the most of the time he has. Enter a school buss full of teenagers and a ticked off farmer...

Jeepers Creepers 2 is a very different movie to the original, in more good ways than bad. I know it's hard to believe there is such a thing as a teen horror sequel that isn't just a re-tread of the original! Jeepers Creepers 2 focusses more on group hysteria (kind of Lord of the Flies Lite), instead of just one or two people on the run, and goes for more action oriented killing scenes. The Creeper is a bit different too - he/she/it spends most of it's time flying (something reserved only for small doses in the original).

The hero of the movie really is the Creeper, sure there's people running from him and trying to kill him, but they really just come across as fodder. I love a good horror movie where the whole audience is rooting for the bad guy (and not just me)!

The one thing that really bugged me was the lack of the Jeepers Creepers song when the Creeper is about. In fact, the only song in the credits was a dodgy chant the basketball team were yelling in the bus!

Overall, a fun movie to watch, but it could have used more killing! Man, that creeper is a fussy eater! You'd probably get more out of this if you'd seen the original first, but it's still a good popcorn movie for anyone that feels like some light-weight scares.