• A bus of teens returning from a championship game is about to make a deadly and unexpected stop in “Jeepers Creepers 2”. The film takes places days after the events in the last film, and details the demonic title character as he enters the final day of his feeding frenzy.
As was established in the first film, every 23rd spring for 23 days, a creature emerges to feed and naturally its food of choice is humans and it is very particular about what it eats. The scent of fear drives the creature, as it strives to induce fear in potential victims in order to determine its needs before selecting and consuming a victim.
The creature has disabled the bus on a remote section of highway in an effort to graze off the inhabitants on its final night of feeding. It accomplishes this in several hit and run raids as it carries off victims only to return at a moments notice keeping the inhabitants trapped.
Mainly unknown actors comprise the cast, as Ray Wise is the only name of note. The cast does a decent job of conveying fear, and upping the hostility as they soon turn on each other over their various petty issues with one another. Sadly, they are not able to provide any tension, as I was expecting to see a bit of 10 Little Indians” where the audience has to guess who is going to be killed next. Instead the film unfolds in a fairly predictable manner, and offers few surprises.
The tone of the film is different from the last film as it is largely set in a single locale instead of having the creature follow its prey down the highway and appear in different locales. The characters also do not stand around and watch as the creature attacks; they do react and at times attempt to fight the creature as well.
While the film is better than the previous one, it is still largely devoid of any scares, and becomes repetitive after a while as one can only watch a band of teens preyed upon for so long before becoming bored. The lack of any chemistry amongst the cast as well as the lack of character development does not allow for the audience to care much for the fate of the cast thus much of the audience is lost.
There is some potential in the series as the title character is an interesting villain, with the right cast and script; this could really have been something. I suspect that audiences have not seen the last of the Creeper and lets hope that the third time will be the charm as part two is a step forward from the first, just not enough to allow the film to take off.
2.5 stars out of 5
