Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)
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Director: Cast: Country: Year: 2003 Score: MPAA Rating: |
The Creeper, everyone’s favorite old-record listenin’, knittin’ lovin’, jitney drivin’ scarecrow impersonator is back, and this time his face looks more like a vagina than ever. (If you really want to get technical about it, he looks like a cross between a vagina and the Wishmaster. Or maybe he looks like the Wishmaster’s vagina?)
But vaginas aside, this movie is ridiculous. The script, apparently written by Tom of Finland and directed by Robert Mapplethorpe, does nothing but put teenage boys into one scenario after another that enables them to take their shirt off. One scene has about ten guys sunning themselves half-naked on top of a bus. You almost expect one of them to say “Hey fellas, my pants are so tight, I think I’m gonna take them off.” But then, five minutes later, in the crucial urination scene, one guy pulls his pants down all the way to his ankles to ***censored***. Who does that in front of other guys? Well, my guess is director Victor Salva, forever known as not the director of Powder, but as the child-molesting director of Powder. I guess this film was part of his court-ordered sentence of telling everyone in America he enjoys the smooth hairlessness of a pre-teen’s nutsack. Thank you, Meagan’s law!
So anyway, the Creeper is back, offing kids one by one on a bus. That’s it until the last twenty minutes when the ever-so-welcomed presence of Ray Wise shows up to somewhat take-out the Creeper with some giant spear throwing action. But it’s much too short and then the ending leaves you to believe it was all for nothing. Which it was.
But really, the worst thing is the epilogue, where we are flashed-forward 23 years into the future and Wise and son have the Creeper on display for the public a five bucks a pop. I don’t know what this is to imply? If there’s a Jeepers Creepers 3, will it take place in the year 2026? And if so, why are the kids driving a 1960’s truck? Why not a flying hovercar that runs on garbage? Also, why is the guy armed with only a shot-gun and that giant-spear thing to defend himself if it wakes up? If this is the future, should they have some sort of photon-disintegrator that would do a better job? I simply refuse to believe that 23 years from now, that’s the best you can do on the weapons front.
Wait a second-I just though of something. Those weapons didn’t work so well the first time he used them. If he had such a hell of a time dispatching the Creeper in the first place, why keep him in one piece, tied up with only some ropes and chains? You ***censored*** need to cut that guy up into 100 different pieces and bury him in 100 different places all over the world. It just seems like the smartest thing to do. But then again, I’m smart enough to not get mixed up with ancient Vagina-face monsters.
Louis Fowler is a frequent contributor to Cinema Eye and Hitch Magazine. He is also the publisher of Damaged Magazine, a new issue of which is coming soon.
Review by: Louis Fowler
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Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)
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Director: Cast: Country: Year: 2003 Score: MPAA Rating: |
Director: Victor Salva
Cast: Ray Wise, Nicki Aycox, a bunch of shirtless young guys, etc.
SYNOPSIS
The Creeper is a half scarecrow/half dragon creature who lives in corn fields and goes on a killing spree once every 23 years. He has many ways of killing people, the most innovative being weird shurikens that look like the throwing star from Krull. (except these shurikens have teeth and bellybuttons sewn onto them). The Creeper makes the mistake of killing a young farm boy, thus setting his father (Ray Wise) off on an Ahab-like quest for revenge.
Coincidentally, a bus filled with shirtless high school basketball players and a couple of young girls crosses the Creepers path. He cripples the bus with a couple of well placed teeth-shurikens and starts going after the teenager filled vehicle like an old sailor tearing into a can of sardines. One of the girls conveniently has a couple of dreams in which the thin premise of the Creeper is revealed. Her revelations have no bearing on the plot. After that, everyone runs around. The Creeper flies around. The angry farmer drives around. They all meet up for the climax and the movie finally ends.
REVIEW
I’ve never seen the first Jeepers Creepers and after seeing this sequel, I count myself lucky. While I am a big supporter of dumb fun and even gave Freddy Vs. Jason a decent review a few weeks ago, I can’t recommend that anybody go see this or even rent it.
This film has no plot, no character development, no suspense and no imagination. The most interesting element of the movie is the ***censored***-erotic subtext Victor Salva’s direction brings to the film. With all it’s leering camerawork, I’m sure this film will find a huge audience among the NAMBLA crowd.
Ray Wise reprises his grieving father performance from Twin Peaks. The intensity of his performance seems very out of place in this movie. His performance is almost blistering compared the the rest of the performances which wouldn’t even be up to far for a syndicated action television series.
The rest of the actors don’t seem to be acting from any kind of script at all. They just bumble around and spout off-the-wall lines about “swinging dicks” and “token white people”. Salva was possibly trying to inject some outdated social commentary into the relationships between the football players, but it just adds to the meaningless clamor of this movie. These characters exist to get killed and yet they are so bland, they even defy the easy stereotypes used by unimaginative horror films. There is the nerdy team manager that stands out because he wears glasses, but the rest of the characters totally blend together.
At times, it seems that Nicki Aycox’s character is meant to be the protagonist of the piece, but she doesn’t get much screen time. Aycox is really cute and it seems like she’s trying to give an actual performance, but she has absolutely nothing to work with. She has a series of convenient dreams in which she comes to an understanding of what is going on with the Creeper. However, nothing happens with these revelations or her character. Towards the end of the movie we see her running around lost and confused, and she apparently survives, but her character is utterly inconsequential.
By the end of the movie, everybody is running around, but we don’t know who anybody is or where the hell they’re going. Then the grieving father shows up and starts firing a home-made harpoon gun out of the back of his pickup truck.
This is the type of movie where you ideally you could at least root for the monster to kill these idiots. But in the case of Jeepers Creepers 2, the monster is just as bland as the rest of the characters. The film itself doesn’t display even have a spark of imagination or humanity. It’s a soul-numbing waste of time.
Review by: Cinema Eye
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Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)
|
Director: Cast: Country: Year: 2003 Score: MPAA Rating: |
Director: Victor Salva
Cast: Ray Wise, Nicki Aycox, a bunch of shirtless young guys, etc.
My review of the original Jeepers Creepers began thusly: “Jeepers Creepers. Movies don’t suck much deepers.” The sequel is a hair better, but a hair better than ***censored*** is still ***censored***.
As the film’s opening crawl informs us, the flying, winged Creeper feasts for 23 days every 23rd spring. We begin on day 22 of such a season, when the youngest son of farmer Ray Wise (Twin Peaks) is snatched up out of the cornfield and carried away. On the next day, a school bus full of a high school state champion basketball team and assorted cheerleaders blows a tire on the near-deserted highway, thanks to the Creeper’s well-aimed special brand of homemade ninja stars. With nowhere to go, the bus serves as a Hometown Buffet for the hungry Creeper, at first picking off (or up) all the adults, until Wise shows up for some heavy-duty harpoonin’ with his truck-mounted, jerry-rigged Post Puncher 500.
JCII has its moments, but only a precious few, and fleeting at that. This installment gives the monster far more screen time, but it’s simply the same thing over and over: Creeper attacks, Creeper flies away, Creeper attacks again. If we were supposed to empathize with the characters, writer/director Victor Salva could’ve picked another group besides cocky athletes. For my money, the Creeper can’t kill them fast enough. But then, Salva’s camera wouldn’t be able to linger on their shirtless, hairless upper bodies. For those who have forgotten all about the Clownhouse-to-
Powder controversy. Salva’s a bit of a Post Puncher 500 himself (think oral sex with underage boys). It’s hard to believe the film’s overt homoeroticism isn’t at least semi-intentional, what with all the bare chests and dialogue like “You want to poke it with sticks?” and “Can’t they just whip out the jack and pump this mutha up?”
I liked Wise, but then again, I like him in just about anything. I also liked Nicki Aycox as the Girl Who Has It All Explained to Her in Dreams, but then again, that’s probably because she’s the only hot one in the movie. But any horror film that delivers such an illogical ending (so chop it up, whydon’tcha!) and christens its characters with names like “Double D” and “Big K” deserves a straight-out D.
Rod Lott is the publisher of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity.
Review by: Rod Lott
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