More elaborate sequel to the effective monster movie of 2001, "Jeepers Creepers II" is more about action than anything else. It's definitely not as creepy (although it does have its spooky moments) and since we now know a fair bit about the Creeper, the mystery element is gone. This story takes place on the last day of the Creeper's feeding cycle, a few days after the events of the first film. A basketball team is returning from a championship game, and the Creeper, after snatching a kid away from his farmer father, tails the teams' bus, crippling it by ruining the tires with something akin to a ninja's throwing stars. It proceeds to decimate the coaching staff & the bus driver, and then terrorize the teens, making sure they can't escape. It's true enough that there are many points in the script with which a viewer can take issue - even yours truly had a hard time buying some of them, and he's a pretty forgiving person. Things tend to get particularly muddled when it comes to the big climax as the teens finally leave the bus, and we wonder where they all get to from scene to scene. It does take a lot of suspension of disbelief to enjoy this movie, but if one can accomplish this, "Jeepers Creepers II" does reward us with some exciting moments and some extremely amusing money shots. For one thing, it's a total hoot to see the Creeper forced to regenerate certain body parts. It gets a LOT more damage done to it this time around; it's good to see various assorted characters be able to fight back. Particularly interesting is the vengeance-obsessed farmer Jack Taggart (veteran character actor Ray Wise ("RoboCop", 'Twin Peaks') getting a rare case of top billing), who fashions some killing implements using his post puncher. Naturally, due to there being a greater number of characters this time around, they don't get fleshed out too much, although writer / director Victor Salva tries to give the material some meat by introducing an element of racism. Overall, this suffers the same fate as many sequels, lacking the originals' freshness and in truth it doesn't give the viewer too many people for whom they can really root. At least it allows Justin Long to reprise his Darry character from the first film, appearing in ghostly form to offer warnings and information to one of the characters here. Nothing especially good, but not bad either; fortunately, one thing it's not is boring. Seven out of 10.
Review of Jeepers Creepers 2
