Jeepers Creepers 2

Rating:
Summary: A weak, disappointing, needless sequel
Review: I'm afraid I'm going to be rather harsh in my assessment of this extremely needless sequel. Writer/director Victor Salva obviously does not agree with one of my central tenets of effective horror: once you show us the monster, the monster can no longer frighten us. The original Jeepers Creepers started out extremely creepy then went downhill midway through - once we saw the true face of the Creeper. This sequel's opening scene is a good one, featuring the Creeper in his black trench coat and hat posing as a scarecrow, but there is not one remotely unsettling scene that takes place after that. Salva concentrated on making the monster uglier and slimier, obviously counting on that to scare us - but it doesn't. We've already seen all this before.

Supposedly, there was not going to be a sequel to Jeepers Creepers; admittedly, it's hard to make a follow-up to a film featuring a creature that only appears every 23 years. Here, though, we are told that events follow immediately those of the first movie - it's the end of the same 23-day period. Of course, the premise here is very different (and I am still very disappointed that the ultra-gorgeous Gina Philips did not have a part in this film). You've got a school bus full of very annoying teenagers returning home from their state basketball championship win (and why there are only three cheerleaders, I have no idea); they break down in the middle of nowhere and soon find themselves harassed and attacked by this terrifying creature with huge wings, sharp claws, and a pretty nasty appetite. Of course, there's no way they can figure out just what the monster is - unless, of course, some girl falls into a temporary fugue state and learns all about him in a dream. We see this dream, and it doesn't include half of the information the girl imparts to her classmates. There's no explanation as to how this girl learns all of this, and that really annoys me.

The film quickly becomes an exercise in tedium as the Creeper attacks, pauses, and attacks again while the teenagers try to stay alive, argue whether or not to try and leave the bus, and fight among themselves. These trivial teenaged arguments are supposed to make these characters seem "real" and thereby make us feel connected to them. Personally, it just made me hate the whole lot of them and yearn desperately for their deaths. Unfortunately, I really couldn't even pull for the Creeper, as he really just doesn't appeal to me as a monster. All of the close-up shots of him tend to make me feel as if Salva is trying to force me into really being horrified by him, but the fact is I really have little feeling for the Creeper one way or the other. To me, the storyline of Jeepers Creepers 2 was really just an excuse for creating tons of special effects - much, much more than we saw in the original film. The visual effects are pretty good for the most part (except for the one decapitation scene, which Salva managed to turn into something just plain silly), but special effects should serve to augment the story, not take its place.

It's true that there are a bunch of special features included on the DVD - some fifteen minutes of deleted or edited scenes, two commentaries, and a whole host of making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes, but no amount of special features can make up for a weak and disappointing film.

Rating:
Summary: something new by anthony m jones
Review: The first "Jeepers Creepers" is a ripping good, but not great, horror movie. It told the story of Trish and Darry Jenner, a brother and sister traveling through the Midwest on the way home from college. The two ran into a supernatural creature, a flying demon in fact, who kept an underground crypt stocked with human corpses gathered on previous excursions. This demon sleeps for a number of years before waking for a couple of weeks to wreak havoc on the surrounding countryside. Trish and Darry got on the beastie's bad side, unfortunately, and spent most of the film trying to stay one step ahead of this grotesque monstrosity. The conclusion of the first film proved disastrous for one of the Jenner kids while providing a lesson to those of us stupid enough to investigate underground crypts full of corpses. "Jeepers Creepers" was enough of a success at the box office that director Victor Salva signed on to do a sequel a couple of years later. "Jeepers Creepers 2" reintroduces us to the icky creature from the first film even as it fulfills an important prerequisite of any horror sequel: upping the body count and punching up the special effects. Gone is the intimacy of the first film.

"Jeepers Creepers 2" takes place just a few days after the nightmare of the first film unfolded. The hunting period of the demon is just about over, so he's out and about trying to claim a few more victims before going nighty night. We come in to see him posing as a scarecrow in the fields of farmer Taggart (Ray Wise). Sadly, Taggart's youngest child falls prey to the Jeeper Creeper right under the gaze of the farmer and his other son. The farmer vows revenge. Meanwhile, a busload of football players and cheerleaders cruises down the road, oblivious to the danger about to swoop out of the sky. When the bus's tire blows, one of the supervising adults discovers a weird, homemade throwing star lodged in the rubber. When another tire blows an hour or so later due to another of these strange stars, it's obvious something downright dangerous is going on. Sure enough, something swift swoops down and whisks the bus driver away. It doesn't take any time at all for all of the adults to perish in excruciating ways, courtesy of the demon, and the kids are left alone to decide the best way to survive. The Jeeper Creeper ratchets up the tension by peering in through a window and pointing to his future victims in a particularly lascivious manner.

The kids try to contact the authorities with the bus's radio to no avail. Then they begin arguing amongst themselves about the best way to escape their fate. Differing ideas about what to do escalate racial tensions between black player Deaundre Davis (Garikayi Mutumbirwa) and a bitter white athlete named Scott Braddock (Eric Nenninger). The Creeper takes advantage of the general dissension to tear up the outside of the bus, punch a hole through the ceiling, and tear one of the kids apart. Just when everything seems hopeless, the kids manage to make radio contact with none other than Taggart and his son, who are out patrolling the back roads looking for the Creeper in a pick up truck armed with a giant homemade harpoon gun. The scenes showing Taggart using the gun on the demon are quite frightening, but the weapon ultimately fails to stop the creature from rampaging amongst the fleeing youths. It's worth watching the film just to see a bunch of teenage kids running across a field while a giant winged CGI creature picks them off with the greatest of ease. We could have used one of these Creepers at my high school. The conclusion to the film leaves the door open for a possible sequel even though Salva says he's not interested in making another one.

The second installment lacks a lot of the punch of the first one. By focusing on two characters in the original film, Salva made the movie more personal and therefore more frightening. You came to know these two people and even care a bit about them. It is difficult to have the same feelings about a busload of kids. There are just too many characters to get to know intimately, although Salva does his best to highlight different personality traits so we can at least recognize who is perishing at the hands (talons?) of the Creeper and why. What works in the sequel? I thought the heavier use of CGI effects, particularly when showing the Creeper zipping around in the sky, were nicely done and didn't overwhelm the film as so many special effects tend to do today. Too, Salva's cinematography work looks great. I loved the creamy golden tone he added to the film during the opening scenes on the Taggart farm, a tone that gave that part of the movie a dreamy, peaceful quality which contrasted wonderfully to the shattering horror of the Creeper "scarecrow" suddenly coming to life. Finally, the claustrophobic confines of the bus, while hardly original in a horror film, did serve to heighten and maintain the tension throughout the movie.

Once again, MGM surprises us with a disc full of extras. Maybe they finally got the idea that DVDs should contain more than the movie and a trailer. We get a couple of commentary tracks, MGM promos, deleted scenes, and many documentaries. There are also trailers for "Jeremiah," "Bulletproof Monk," "Out of Time," "Shredder," and both Jeepers Creepers films. Fans of the first film will definitely want to check this one out. I seem to recall that this particular film made a lot of money at the box office, so expect another sequel sometime in the future even if Salva refuses to helm it.