JEEPERS CREEPERS 2

Okay, I got lazy and didn’t feel like heading to the video store, so instead I consulted the wise old sage named “Cinemax” for my horror flick fix. I found JEEPERS CREEPERS 2, which admittedly has a high budget considering the movies typically reviewed by this site. What a great tagline: “Every 23rd Spring for 23 days it gets to eat.” For some reason that line sounds cool. I know it prompts the question “Why every 23rd spring and Why for 23 straight days?” Think of the Creeper as those annoying Cicadas, except he waits an additional 6 years before gracing us with his presence. This also prompts the inevitable quagmire that future Creepers installments will take place so far in the future that characters will most likely fight the beast-man off with laser beams and photon guns. 

The victims (er, characters) in this one are the school basketball team and their cheerleaders. The characters include a blatantly racist white boy, various non-descript African American players, and an effeminate guy named Izzy (the group refers to him as “Izzy or isn’t he?”).  If I am missing someone (and I am), that’s because none of the other characters really stood out. You might as well use names like “Stereotypical Italian guy” or “Slutty white girl”, because the actors are secondary to the Creeper in this one. That being said, Eric Nenninger, as Scotty Braddock, deserves to be singled out for his performance as he was the only one who showed any real credible emotion and has the screen presence and acting range to be in movies not reviewed by this website.

So the bus breaks down because of a flat tire, but, upon closer inspection, it appears that the tire was pierced by an odd-looking Chinese-star-like object with teeth at the points. After exiting the bus, a member of the crew is, within the blink of an eye, snatched and carried into the stratosphere by a strange winged creature. Very early on in the movie, the kids find themselves face to face with this dark-faced, evil creature known as the Creeper. The Creeper has pointy fangs that come together like a closed bear trap, a tongue (no KISS references please) that licks its chops for fresh teens and piercing blue eyes that zero in on their targets.

From this point on, the students are confronted with a basic dilemma, stay inside and watch as the Creeper tries to claw his way inside or make a run for it into a nearby barn. Scotty repeatedly offers his hypothesis on the matter like Bob Costas in the 2001 World Series. We get it, Bob,  “Major League Baseball games are too long and something needs to be done about it” and we get it, Scotty, “Maybe if the group makes a run for the barn, only a couple kids will die as opposed to everyone,” just say it once, please.

Scotty finally gets his way and the group makes a mad dash. How many of them, if any, survive? I won’t tell, but I will tell you that a curveball in the whole equation is the participation of a local farmer who lost his son to the Creeper. When? If you said 23 years ago, you win a Honey Baked Ham. Needless to say, this farmer has not been twiddling his thumbs for the past 23 years. Instead he has trained for this moment like Rocky to exact his revenge for his fair-haired little lad.

Something tells me that writer/director Victor Salva won’t wait another 23 years to release the third installment of Jeepers Creepers and to be honest, I would be willing to stomach another one as this one went down easy. The Creeper is pretty scary and this is a decent B horror movie that because of its box office success, has the luxury of a multimillion dollar shooting and advertising budget. Enjoy it.

Rating: ** (out of four)

Comments

[anonymous]

Are we a couple of years late with this review?

[Dan]

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