Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

"Every 23rd spring, for 23 days, it gets to eat."

So warns the opening white text against a black background, in case you forgot that those exact words were spoken aloud by psychic Jezelle Gay Hartman, played so affectingly by Patricia Belcher, just two years prior in Jeepers Creepers 1. 

Following this written line of basic exposition regarding the Creeper (Jonathan Breck), Jeepers Creepers 2 picks up on day 22, one day before it's forced to retreat into hibernation for another 23 years, on the farm of the Taggart family, which consists of father Jack (Ray Wise), oldest son Jackie Jr. (Luke Edwards), youngest son Billy (Shaun Fleming), and their dog, Mac. This introduction kicks off Jeepers Creepers 2 on a promising note, with returning writer-director Victor Salva creating an ominous atmosphere through setting, camera movement, and shallow depth of field. Cinematographer Don E. FauntLeRoy pans his camera slowly across the cornfield in broad daylight, painting the sunny sky in a luminous orange glow that lulls us into a false sense of familial security. After all, the Creeper typically attacks at night when his victims are isolated; this family of three is working together in the safety of their property under the comfort of the sweltering sun. 

However, Jack Sr. and Jr. are working close to their home, while little Billy is far away in the cornfield, setting up a row of scarecrows to keep the birds away from their crops. FauntLeRoy makes effective use of shallow focus, foregrounding Billy in focus as he sets up a scarecrow while the Creeper stands still out of focus in the background, assuming the appearance and position of just another scarecrow. A flock of familiar crows gathers around the Creeper's post as though they're his loyal pets, their unsettling caws portending their master's presence in a manner that alerts the audience, but not Billy. Looking ahead, Mac begins barking incessantly. Editor Ed Marx cuts back and forth between Billy in the cornfield and Jack and Jackie in the field, the latter two yelling at Billy for supposedly misusing Jack Sr.'s Post Puncher 500, despite Billy's insistence to the contrary. The point of this petty conflict is clear: to engender sympathy for the ill-fated Billy. In his last moments of life, he's being lectured and accused by his father and brother for either an accident or something he didn't do altogether. As for Jack Sr. and Jr., they will have to live with the guilt of knowing that moments before their loved one was abducted and devoured, they yelled at him over petty farm equipment. 

As Billy turns his head to the side, he glimpses the scarecrow to the left jerk its head back forward. Terrified and uncertain of what he just witnessed, Billy makes the mistake of slowly approaching the scarecrow, staring intently at it for a prolonged moment, instilling a sense of impending dread in the viewer. FauntLeRoy pedestals his camera from the scarecrow's face, silhouetted against the blinding glare of the sun, down to the talons on its feet, which suddenly twitch forward. Billy turns around and runs toward his home, screaming for his father and brother. Knowing his cover is blown, the Creeper levitates from his post and pursues Billy overhead. Before Billy can make it back to the farm, the Creeper pounces on him, the abrupt silence alerting the elder Taggarts. The Creeper sprints through the cornfield, dragging Billy by his shoulder. Billy screams helplessly for his father, who chases after him with a shotgun, with Jackie Jr. in tow. Neither Taggart is fast enough to catch up to Billy before he's elevated from the ground and flown into the sky. Jack and Jackie freeze in their tracks and stare up at the sky, transfixed with shock and horror, unable to comprehend what they just witnessed, their loved one never to be seen again.

It's a more conventional opening than that of its predecessor, which kept both of its characters alive until the very end, but it represents the high point of the sequel, unveiling a more uncompromising dimension to the Creeper: unlike Michael, Jason, Freddy, and Leatherface, this monster has no qualms about slaughtering a child. Unfortunately, as soon as the Creeper spreads his massive wings and flies up to the sky with poor Billy, the quality of the movie plummets to the ground.

Jumping forward the following day, a school bus transporting a high school basketball team back from a championship game suffers a blowout on a deserted street. Getting out of the bus to investigate, driver Betty (Diane Delano) and coaches Charlie Hanna (Thom Gossom Jr.) and Dwayne Barnes (Tom Tarantini) discover a handcrafted shuriken containing a human tooth in the middle lodged into one of the tires, but decide against informing the students of such. With no cellphone signal (is there ever in this type of horror film?) or many passing vehicles, the busload makes the best of their irksome situation, spreading out across the adjacent field, sunbathing on the roof of the bus, venturing out for a smoke. 

By nightfall, everyone gathers on the bus and makes their way home on the wobbly strength of three remaining tires, only to have another shuriken puncture another tire, stranding them for good. As the adults light flares and place them across the street, the Creeper descends from the sky and starts picking off members of the bus one by one. The jocks and cheerleaders lock the door and huddle together in the bus while the Creeper surrounds them, systematically selecting who it wants based on the smell of their collective fear. Meanwhile, back at the Taggart farmstead, Jack Sr. remains in shock, listening to a police radio for reports of nearby abductions and sightings that may clue him to his son's killer's whereabouts, all while working on a weapon that may finally bring his reign of terror to a close. 

Two weeks ago, I reviewed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and bemoaned how Tobe Hooper, the director and co-writer of one of the scariest, grittiest, most transgressive and traumatizing horror films ever crafted, could have fallen so far from greatness only 12 years later while making the sequel. While the original Jeepers Creepers isn't on the same level as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a similar accusation can be leveled against Jeepers Creepers 2. However, in the case of this sequel, the descent in quality is even more inexcusable. Yes, Hooper did direct The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, but neither he nor his original co-author, Kim Henkel, scripted it; the blame in that department falls squarely on the shoes of L.M. Kit Carson. For Jeepers Creepers 2, the entire creative team behind the original has resumed their positions: Victor Salva is both the writer and director, Don E. FauntLeRoy is the cinematographer, Ed Marx is the editor, and Bennett Salvay is the composer. Based on the work of all except maybe FauntLeRoy, it seems that Jeepers Creepers should have been a one-and-done. Aside from an intense opening and a single gasp-inducing jump scare in which the Creeper flies sideways against the windows of the bus, practically none of the nerve-shredding tension and suspense of the original have resurfaced here. You would never guess that the artists responsible for Part 1 had any involvement with Part 2. 

For starters, Jeepers Creepers 2 lacks the character intimacy and identification of the original. On the first go-around, Salva centered his story around a pair of young-adult siblings driving home from college for spring break, only to find themselves ensnared in a living nightmare. Darry and Trish Jenner were compelling protagonists, lent endearing personalities, lived-in chemistry, an authentic love/hate dynamic, and palpable fear by Justin Long and Gina Philips. Both characters are sorely missed in Jeepers Creepers 2. In their place is a much larger roster of potential heroes and victims -- a grieving and vengeful father and son, a busload of basketball jocks and cheerleaders, a masculine, tough-as-nails female driver, and two coaches -- none of whom emerges as a remotely captivating character. 

The worst offender is Scotty Braddock (Eric Nenninger), the archetypical douchebag who (1) you know is going to die, (2) you want to see die, and (3) you don't even feel much elation when he does die because the outcome is so blandly predetermined. Scotty is petulant, racist, and cowardly. While the rest of his teammates triumphantly sing their team anthem, riding the wave of having just won a championship basketball game, Scotty sulks silently in the backseat as though he just suffered a soul-crushing tragedy. Why is he dissociating from his exhilarated teammates, you may wonder? Because he was only allowed to play for a measly 12 minutes. Poor man-baby. In Scotty's overtly racist mind, he believes that Coach Barnes underutilized him on account of his skin color, preferring to grant more game time to his black players. Rather than be happy that his team literally won the championship, regardless of his involvement, Scotty pompously believes that he himself is responsible for even bringing his team to the championship in the first place. 

As if his personality couldn't get more disagreeable, Scotty reveals himself as a homophobe to boot, accusing sportswriter Izzy Bohen (Travis Schiffner) of coming on to him. (Methinks the jock doth protest too much.) During an altercation with Izzy, Scotty grows furious at Deaundre "Double D" Davis (Garikayi Mutambirwa) for putting a hand on his shoulder, accuses him of trying to "play cock of the walk," and calls him "bro" in a suggestive tone. In his most despicable display of "every man for himself" disloyalty, Scotty attempts to divide the survivors into two groups: "the will-be eaten and won't-be eaten." He suggests that those singled out by the Creeper exit the bus as sacrifices for the wellbeing of the rest of the team. (Talk about a team leader.) The problem with this idea, aside from its immorality, is that Scotty conveniently ignores the fact that he's a part of the Creeper's chosen targets. 

In place of Jezelle Hartman is the ridiculously named Minxie Hayes (Nicki Aycox), the most irritatingly contrived plot device of the screenplay. Prior to the events on the bus, Minxie was an ordinary, cheerful cheerleader; by nightfall, she's transformed into a psychic, Salva arbitrarily supplying her with dreams/hallucinations/premonitions of the Creeper's previous victims, Darry and Billy, warning her to turn the bus around and get as far away from Poho County as possible. After two of these visions, Minxie is reduced from a potential final girl to the thankless task of an exposition-spouting plot device. Out of all the people on the bus, why is she chosen to experience these hallucinatory warnings? What makes her so special? Scotty even calls her out on the absurdity of her newfound knowledge: "You were waving pom-poms at people this morning. Now all of a sudden, you're a psychic hotline?" "I don't know!" snaps Minxie. "You want to explain it to me? Because I can't." Unfortunately, just because Salva acknowledges the contrivance of Minxie's newfound psychic ability doesn't make it any less contrived.

For the third time over the course of two movies, two times within the same one, Minxie is told by Darry that "Every 23rd spring, for 23 days, it gets to eat." This is the only piece of information that is relayed explicitly. Yet somehow, when she wakes up, Minxie is also able to relay things that she wasn't told in her dreams: that the Creeper can smell something in people's fear that helps it select who it wants; that it's existed for thousands of years and nothing has been able to kill it; once it selects a target, it will stop at nothing to find them whether they're hiding in the bus or under their beds; and after its time runs out, it will return 23 years from now and 23 years from then. Minxie repeats this exposition at least twice. 

Aside from Minxie, Scotty, Double D, Izzy, and Scotty's reluctant girlfriend, Rhonda Truitt (Marieh Delfino), the remainder of the high schoolers are interchangeable background props, many of whom are given few to zero lines to speak. They're just there on the bus. Their primary direction is to gawk outside the windows in wide-eyed, slack-jawed horror (and none of them are as talented at that as Justin Long). Andy "Bucky" Buck (Billy Aaron Brown) is the obligatory dunce who stands perfectly beneath a crater-shaped hole in the roof of the bus twice and nearly gets his head ripped off on both occasions (which reflects poorly on the Creeper's strength because he's given ample time to decapitate Bucky on the second snatch). Within one scene, Jonny Young (Drew Tyler Bell) silently establishes himself as even more of a heartless, contemptible coward than Scotty when he refuses to open the door for his screaming, pleading companions. Not even a momentary look of remorse passes across his baby face, yet Jonny is somehow permitted to survive the night without paying a single penalty. Between him and Scotty, I would have spared the more prominent character. As for Izzy, his ultimate idea for defeating the Creeper and saving Rhonda and Double D is more reckless and deadly than heroic. He essentially offers them a way to die that simply won't be directly caused by the Creeper, and his survival -- hinted by a distant shot of him crawling away from the wreckage of a pickup truck -- is woefully unlikely. 

As the actual hero of Jeepers Creepers 2, Ray Wise is given nothing to do except gaze morosely into the distance with the corners of his mouth downturned into a Robert De Niro-esque frown. It's difficult to empathize with Jack's profound loss when nary a sliver of authentic grief or rage registers on Wise's blandly stern face. Until he's called into action, Jack just sits in a chair in his living room and listens to a police radio or constructs a harpoon gun out of a dagger conveniently left behind by the Creeper (which also possesses the unaccountable power to fly out of one's hands and across a room) and his own post puncher. The most passionate and all-in performance is submitted by Mutambirwa, whose eyes flicker with vulnerability, terror, and anger, the latter emotion also conveyed in his voice. In the scene where Double D finally stands up to Scotty and calls him out on his cowardice, Mutambirwa delivers his cathartic monologue in a taut, inflamed growl, his eyes unblinking and intense. 

Throughout Jeepers Creepers 2, I kept thinking to myself, "What is FauntLeRoy's obsession with close-ups of inexpressive faces?" Beginning with the final shot of the opening set piece, as Jack and Jackie gaze upward at the sky following Billy's abduction, FauntLeRoy zooms his camera in slowly on an extreme close-up of Wise's eyes before editor Marx dissolves into a next-day shot of the school bus driving down the highway. One of his better techniques is a series of wide shots of the deserted road and surrounding field in the night, and at the top of the frame, a stray wing flaps down briefly to put us on edge; we know it's not a bird. FauntLeRoy once again uses shallow focus to depict the abduction of Coach Hanna, framing Betty and Coach Barnes at opposite ends of the foreground in sharp focus while a blurred Charlie is picked up and flown away in the background. On two occasions, FauntLeRoy lingers for no reason on close-ups of the Creeper's dagger implanted in a lampshade and the pole of the Post Puncher 500. 

Where Salva and FauntLeRoy emphatically fail is in their misguided presentation of the Creeper. In the original, they masterfully employed Spielberg's tactic for depicting the great white shark in Jaws: concealing the Creeper's appearance throughout the first half in wide shots and silhouettes to build suspense and preserve his aura of menace and mystery. When his face was finally unveiled in close-up almost an hour in, the makeup was still frightening -- if a tad generic and evocative of Freddy Krueger and the Wishmaster -- but no comparison for the simple power of the unknown. Now that the cat has been let out of the bag, Salva and FauntLeRoy seem to throw their hands in the air and subject their antagonist to the most common pitfall of horror sequels: facial overexposure. 

Almost as soon as the Creeper begins terrorizing the busload of anonymous, largely unsympathetic teenagers, FauntLeRoy films him almost exclusively in close-ups as he hovers outside the bus and sniffs out his potential targets. This terminates his ability to actually frighten. When viewed up-close for a lengthy period, the Creeper doesn't even look that terrifying anymore. Beyond the excess facial close-ups, Breck is clumsily directed into making silly humanlike gestures and expressions that make him appear less like an ancient monster and more like an actor in makeup and costume: when he sniffs out his prey, the Creeper gives a confirmatory wink, makes a finger gun, grins hungrily, and licks a window with sensuality. To tell someone they don't pass his smell test, he cocks his head to the side dismissively. For the scene where the Creeper handpicks his batch of targets, FauntLeRoy turns his camera upside down to create the illusion that the Creeper is hanging upside down from the bus' roof. Distractingly, he fails to take into account how the Creeper's hat remains firmly on his head the whole time. 

During Minxie's first dream, Marx edits the Creeper running through the Taggarts' cornfield and tossing a throwing star into her bus' tire in stupid-looking slow motion that, combined with Salvay's horrendous score, creates the vibe of an action film more than horror. Not only does the Creeper possess spot-on aim, but clairvoyance as well apparently: while chasing Scotty across the field, the Creeper is able to conveniently predict that he will stop running and rest his hand against a tree, and so he may time his dagger-toss perfectly so that it pierces Scotty's arm and pins him to the tree.

On a technical level, Jeepers Creepers 2 boasts three sequences of brilliantly grotesque special effects that combine prosthetics and CGI: the first is when one of the Creeper's shower curtain-like wings suddenly envelops and decapitates Dante (Al Santos), whose headless corpse continues to flail its arms aimlessly before collapsing to the floor; the second is when Rhonda (who proves a more take-charge, principled final girl than Minxie) stabs a javelin through the bus' rooftop and impales the Creeper through his eye, the tip protruding from the back of his head; and the third follows shortly after, when the Creeper tears his own head off, chucks it off the bus, and Dante's still-active head regurgitates up its stomach, emerges from the neck, and seamlessly transforms into the face of the Creeper, who glares directly into the camera.

Ed Marx relies heavily on reaction shots of characters in response to horrifying imagery. When the Creeper makes its first few appearances, snatching Betty and Charlie into the sky or attacking Dwayne, Marx immediately cuts to the teens flinching back, screaming, racing to the windows and looking up at the sky to see where they went. The only instance in which Marx generates a semblance of uncertainty-fueled suspense is when he cuts back and forth between Rhonda, Izzy, and Double D trying to pull the dagger out of Scotty's arm and the Creeper flying straight at them. While they succeed in releasing the knife before the Creeper arrives, it still snatches him anyway. This outcome is cleverly unpredictable but not particularly heart-wringing; Scotty's apology to Double D is too little, too late and motivated more by desperation and self-interest than genuine remorse. 

The climax, in which the two groups of characters inevitably converge on the road and conspire to annihilate the Creeper using Jack's homemade harpoon gun, is interminable, visually incoherent, repetitive, and overly action-oriented. The ending, which transpires 23 years into the future, features a trio of teen friends traveling to the Taggart farm to view the still-hibernating body of the Creeper. Even within this simple epilogue, a few plot holes still manage to poke through: Jackie appears to still be living with his dad as a 40-something-year-old man, with no wife or kids in sight; Mac the dog is still alive (to be fair, it can be assumed that Jack bought another dog, but I honestly think Salva is too stupid to consider that Mac wouldn't be alive 23 years later); and the Taggarts only charge spectators $5 apiece. I feel like a spectacle of this caliber -- a real-life bat out of Hell -- would warrant a vastly greater charge in 2024. 

Meanwhile, Jack Sr. (smothered in blatantly unconvincing "weary old-man" makeup, topped with untidy gray hair) appears to have no life, purpose, or desires beyond sitting in a chair and waiting for the moment that the Creeper will inevitably reawaken for its next 23-day feeding cycle so he may shoot another harpoon into its heart, thereby eliminating the possibility of a third installment. If only it were that simple.

4.4/10