“Whatever it is, it’s a smell *freak*, man!”

Heather’s Rating: 4/10 toothy ninja stars

Heather’s Review: Yes, I know they’re actually called “shurikens.” Kudos to Freddy Krueger’s country cousin for the unique weaponry.

Much like this review, Jeepers Creepers: The Sequel begins without much of an intro. The audience gets a couple of lines of text stating that every 23 years, for 23 days, “It” gets to eat. Today is Day 22, making it three days after the events of the first film.

We then go straight to Jack Taggart, Sr. (played by Ray Wise) and his sons working on their farm. The creature abducts Billy, the youngest, right in front of them. The remaining son finds Ol’ Flappy Bird’s ritual knife laying in the field and brings it to his pop. Jack Sr. inspects it, then channels Ash Williams and starts crafting himself a monster-killing machine.

Hard cut to a bus carrying a high school football team back home from their championship game. You are about to be introduced to a slew of characters that you aren’t going to give a flying demon about, except for Scotty. You’re gonna hate Scotty from the moment he pouts out his first whine, er, line.

The bus gets a flat tire, and I sure hope you love buses, because we’re gonna be here a while. The driver tries calling for help while the other adults evaluate the situation, eventually finding a ninja star made of teeth and bones embedded in the tire.

Meanwhile, shirtless high school boys are tanning on top of the bus, arguing with each other, then going out and peeing together while accusing each other of being gay. I’ll just point out that Victor Salva directed this, and then we’re going to move on from that lovely subject.

After hours of no response to their calls for help, the group decides to get back on the bus and drive slowly to find help. This is when the movie focuses on the only other high schooler character of note: Minxie. She’s one of the cheerleaders, sleeping as the bus slowly goes down the road on its flat tire. Suddenly she starts having a dream/vision of Billy and Darry (the protagonist of the first film), trying to warn her about The Creeper before he throws a second shuriken at the schoolbus.

It turns out this was in real time (so how exactly was this vision supposed to help?), so Minxie wakes up when the vehicle takes a hit to another tire, stopping it for good. It’s now time for The Creeper to begin picking off the cast one by one, starting with the adults.

This movie isn’t very gory aside from some of the creature’s injuries. Still, the practical effects on the creature, and even some of the CGI, looks pretty good. Otherwise we just see characters being grabbed and disappearing with CGI Creepy up into the sky, Team Rocket-style.

After what feels like an eternity of people yelling inside and outside of the bus, we finally bring Jack Sr. and his son Jr. back into the picture. He and his son hear one of the distress calls from the bus on their CB radio and head off to help. Once he gets there we see Jack Sr. fashioned himself a homemade harpoon and strapped into the bed of his pickup, with the ritual knife as the spear tip. How he has any idea this will be effective against Creeptastic, I do not know.

It makes contact, but Jack’s White Whale will not be caught so easily. Much damage and a couple more deaths ensue before Creepy is finally pinned, helpless, to the ground as the dawn arrives on Day 23. The Creature’s time is up, and so is this movie’s.

Jeepers Creepers 2 is definitely not a great movie, but as a sequel, it’s fairly strong. The audience is treated like they already saw the first film, so it wastes no time just throwing us into the action. Jonathan Breck gives The Creeper a ton of personality, and I give huge props to anyone who can do that in full creature makeup. He and Ray Wise are unfortunately the only two interesting characters on screen, which is a huge drawback. At the very least, this is a good background film for a Halloween party.

Intermission!

• Given that the characters continually hear news and police radio discussing the carnage of the first film, the sequel seems to be set in one of the neighboring counties.
• A radio announcer describes the church basement/lair from the first film as “A human tapestry of torture and sadism”, which is how I feel about gyms.
• That ritual knife has a real hatred for Jack’s lamp
• Watching The Creeper hop through the field like a fox was absolutely hilarious.
• Step right up, come see “The Bat Out of Hell” for only $5!
• Seriously, just look up Victor Salva, because I’m not gonna talk about it here.