A Review of "Jeepers Creepers 2"

Ah. The only one in the trilogy I haven't touched yet. With good reason! When I did Jeepers Creepers 3 when it first came out in September of '17 (which you can read here), I wanted so much to like it but just after another viewing when the film was released on Netflix, it was just complete cheap, chintzy and it just didn't look good. Nothing like the original film, which I still watch regularly... even outside of Halloween season. It was the second of the three I reviewed, which you can read here. I'll stand here and watch some more YouTube until you're all caught up...

...

"Say hello to my harpoon-tang."

...alright, perfect. So now, let's wrap up the trilogy by talking about Jeepers Creepers 2. Unlike 3, 2 came out quite soon after the first movie, only about two years took place between the first one and this. 3 fell into development hell for several years and wouldn't see the light of day until fourteen years; that's right. Between 2 and 3, I went to Junior High School, graduated High School, enrolled in a community college, transferred to a big university, graduated with a degree and worked the first year of my first post-college job... all without really noticing any of it. But I digress. Directed by Victor Salva, the film takes place on the 23rd day of the monster's feeding cycle and shows us a completely different set of characters. While in the first film, the Creeper stalked just two college-aged siblings, this movie has him stalking farmers, pedestrians and a high-school basketball team that just won a state championship. Let's take a bit out of this turkey and figure out if it holds up as a sequel and as a movie in general or if it's appeal and scares fall on silent, unimpressed audiences.

The film opens on the twenty-second day of feeding, where The Creeper (Jonathan Breck), disguised as a scarecrow, abducts young Billy Taggart (Shaun Fleming) in front of his father Jack (Ray Wise) and older brother Jack Jr (Luke Edwards). It's a pretty great opening sequence, very James Bond like in that it sets up the characters and prepares you for an adventure unlike any other... only with this film you can take that as either an adventure of fun or an adventure of utter bollocks, but I'll let you decide. The next day, a school bus carrying a high school basketball team and cheerleaders suffers a blowout, after one of the tires is hit by a hand-crafted shuriken made of bone fragments and human teeth. While shocking... the coaches and bus driver don't really seem too horrified by it. One just throws it down and is like "Damn thing's got teeth in it"... but then the other coach just picks it back up again. Alrighty, I guess that guy's seen enough shit to not be phased by a homemade shuriken made from human body parts. Where's our prequel backstory about that guy's life?

"I told you, I promise not to eat you."

Later, cheerleader Minxie Hayes (Nicki Aycox) has a vision of Billy Taggart and Darry Jenner (Justin Long), the dude from the first movie, who attempt to warn her about The Creeper, before he blows out another tire, disabling the bus completely. He warns her much better later, but in this dream he just points and yells silent jargon you can't decipher. With the team stranded, The Creeper abducts bus driver Betty Borman (Diane Delano) and Coach Charlie Hanna (Thom Gossom, Jr.); Coach Dwayne Barnes (Tom Taratini) attempts to flee back into the bus, but is taken by The Creeper when Scotty Braddock (Eric Nenninger) confronts him about useless high school drama. "You got a problem with me coach?" "Now's not the time for this!" then he's killed. Thanks Scotty, you limey dickhead.

After rapidly and successfully picking off the adults, the Creeper returns and, in a scene you'll either find chilling or just downright laughable, he singles out five of the students: Dante Belasco (Al Santos), Jake Spencer (Josh Hammond), Scotty, Andy “Bucky” Buck (Billy Aaron Brown), and Deaundre “Double D” Davis (Garikayi Mutambirwa... say that five times fast). How does The Creeper do this? By licking the window and making sexually suggestive faces at them. Did I mention Victor Salva was arrested and charged with being a pedophile during one of his earlier films, if not his first one? I think some fetishes are taking over here. No time for that, though, because Minxie has another vision. One in which Darry says The Creeper emerges every twenty-third spring, for twenty-three days to eat humans, and she tells the other students. However, what Darry tells her and what she tells them are two completely different things. Darry just mentions when the Creeper eats, but Minxie says that Darry told her that the Creeper has been alive for thousands of years and that nothing has been able to kill it, among many other things. This is actually explained in a deleted scene, but for the theatrical cut, you'd think they'd want to try and fix this glaring omission before the put this shit out in theaters... but I guess not.

Dawson's Creek took a dark turn after the fifth season

Meanwhile, back in Podunk county: after hearing several police reports, the Taggarts go hunting for The Creeper to take revenge for taking Billy, and soon make radio contact with the downed school bus. The Creeper attacks Bucky, but Rhonda stabs it through the head with a javelin. Dante begins prodding the Creeper’s wing, only for it to grab and decapitate him. The Creeper tears off its injured head and uses Dante’s severed head to replace its own, which again, is a pretty gnarly scene and feeds (no pun intended) off of Jezelle's explanation that the Creeper can repair itself by eating human body parts. The students decide to leave the bus to find help, but the Creeper returns and chases them into a field, where The Creeper kills Jake and takes Scotty. The Creeper flies fast, but I didn't know he could fly so fast back and forth between his hideout and the bus that he can just take all these kids in rapid succession. That's stretching it, guys. Later, when The Creeper attacks Bucky on the bus again, Taggart arrives and shoots it with a home-made harpoon (badass), but The Creeper fights off Taggart and manages to escape after flipping over the bus. Rhonda (Marieh Delfino), Izzy Cohen (Travis Schiffner), and Double D find a truck and attempt to escape but are chased by the Creeper again. Izzy pushes Rhonda out of the truck before causing the vehicle to crash, injuring both Double D and the Creeper, who loses an arm, a leg, and a wing, although Izzy crawls from the wreckage before the truck explodes. The Creeper continues to pursue Double D by leaping towards him and, when it has Double D pinned down, Taggart shows up and shoots the Creeper in the head with the harpoon. He repeatedly stabs the Creeper in the chest but it goes into a hibernation state before it can die. Which renders the entirety of the attack on the school bus, the foot chase and the climax with the harpoon gun... entirely pointless, but hey I guess they had to leave it open for a sequel; a sequel that would be trash, but hey they didn't know that at the time.

"Alright, who shot the spitball at the driver?
Don't make me come down there!"

Twenty-three years later, a group of teenagers drive to Taggart's farm, where the Creeper is a sideshow attraction, called "The Bat Out of Hell". They are actually referring to the Creeper here, not the Meat Loaf album. They see an elderly Taggart watching it with the harpoon at his side, and when they ask him if he is waiting for something, he looks up at the Creeper and says: “about three more days, give or take a day or two". Then we slow zoom on the mummified, shriveled-up corpse of the Creeper before cutting to black and rolling end credits.

So yeah, does Jeepers Creepers 2 hold up the caliber of the predecessor? No. It isn't scary, it's just somewhat chilling here and there with some jump scares thrown in. Nothing like how uncomfortable the first film could make audiences feel or just downright terrify them with its imagery. I think having some of the film take place during the day was a detriment. The Creeper is spookier when he's out lurking and flying at night. At day, he should be using the freaky rustic truck. At least that's something that the third film got right, more usage of the truck, but it also should've had way more scenes take place at night. Also, while this one is nowhere near as bad about it as the third film, this film does get cartoony with some of its special effects choices. Also, I don't know why the Creeper was so dry and dusty in the first film and why he's so wet in this one, but I guess it works.

While a fun romp and an entertaining enough spooky movie for the Halloween season, it isn't near as terrifying or unsettling as the first film, but thankfully it also isn't as cheap and laughable as the third one either. Also unlike the third film, this film's characters aren't completely forgettable. Many of them were actually very well written and had great banter between them. The scenes where they're debating who's leaving the bus and who's staying on, how they're going to pry the door open and how they're going to escape; all their lines feed off each other greatly. That's something this movie did right, great tension. Still, it does suffer by showing too much of the Creeper, not having him lurk away from prying eyes in the shadows, making animalistic movements and eating people's tongues, and really toning down everything that made the first one awesome. Again, while retroactively not going nearly as soft and bargain-counter as the third one. It nestles itself somewhere between them in terms of quality... almost as if it were the *gasp* second one. Bottom line: I enjoy a watch of it every now and then, usually after I'll watch the first one (not every time) but I can also see how people would think it's pretty weak and see it as a pretty lame horror movie to rent on a Saturday night movie night. It wasn't "Syfy Original Movie" level yet, but it was getting there...