That diamond is long gone! I'm back and hopefully writing a bit more now. Atlanta is getting into su...
That diamond is long gone! I'm back and hopefully writing a bit more now. Atlanta is getting into summer so methinks it'll be warm here for the next 5 months or so. After the cold winter I'm ready for it!
Member since:05.09.2003
Reviews:30
Members who trust:17
In keeping with the general theme of "hey, let's go and see a silly movie" which has endured over the last several years, the latest cinematic debacle to occur in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne involved the sequel to what was one of the more interesting and suspenseful horror films to hit the screens in quite a long time. With the success of the original, and recalling the general lack of an original idea within the cocoons of Hollywood, it was inevitable that there was to be a Jeepers Creepers 2. I would have much preferred if they'd at least given it an interesting name - something like "Heebie Jeebies" or "Wowsing Willies", along those lines would have been nice. Alas, we have been blessed with the generic "2" suffix. Yawn. That's usually a bad sign.
It was an auspicious beginning to the evening when the womenfolk decided to rock up late to the cinema, as myself and my mate sat around variously pacing and sipping from our mega-sized cold beverages. We missed about the first 2 minutes or so of the movie due to this tardiness, which dismayed my mate as he missed the dodgy previews, but seeing as I don't care to sit through ads for Boronia Plaster and all of that annoying stuff, I couldn't have given the bum of a rat at this time.
We wandered in to see a hillbilly farming family variously buggering around with rusted old utes and wandering in cornfields. Billy is securing scarecrows in the cornfields (not that they really work, I'm sure), when he notices one of them move. As you do in horror films, instead of getting the heck out of dodge when a supposedly inaminate object
moves, he wandered up to check it out, and winds up getting carried away by the creature we've come to know as The Reaper.
All this occurs on the 22nd day of The Reaper's awakening. Anyone who has seen the first knows that the Reaper awakes every 23 years, in order to feed for 23 days before going back to this random period of hibernation. But, in order to survive for 23 years of slumber, obviously your typical demonspawn from the Seventh Circle needs to consume quite a lot of flesh. And this bugger has a predilection for human meat. Where he takes his meals, due to the destruction of his previous home, you never see, and might have been of interest.
Scene changes from fatherly/filial anguish to a rambuctious bus full of hormonally-charged high school jocks, with a smattering of cheerleaders thrown in for good measure. As the bus careers along to the tune of some inane high school sporting battle song, and variously significant glances are exchanged among members of the entourage, the bus suddenly shudders to a half after a sudden puncture. After some moments of muttering and buggering about we discover that a strangely-constructed ninja star has done the damage. The driver decides to continue along on three wheels until yet another of the morbid weapons punctures another wheel, and by this time they're absolutely stuffed.
Before long the Reaper makes a predictable return, and before you know it, various authority figures are picked out by the Reaper in a lamely transparent way to isolate the huddling teenagers. Apparently, the Reaper selects people who have body parts that it wants - why it needs these body parts, I've never really been able to work out, since it is generally fully intact when it swoops down.
One semi-interesting sub-plot involves, uh, one of the girls named Mixie (Minxie?) who has visions of the Reaper. In fact, in one of these visions she gets a warning from the main character in the original to turn back. Of course, she takes forever and a day to spit out this premonition, and not much is gained by it aside from a little bit of insight into the creature. About the only suspense created by the story is the gormlessness of the characters and their constant ability to drag out a scene, which means that while you wait around for the Reaper, you start to get annoyed. She's not a strong character, but she at least had more dimension to her than "blonde, blue eyed ditz", as one might ordinarily suspect
When the jocks find ways to fight back against the winged menace, and manage to injure it, you do see that it is virtually indestructible - it regenerates by eating the bits that have been chopped off, stabbed or otherwise mangled to a pulp. It's a bit strange to see how fallible the creature is - it doesn't seem to be very smart. But the fact that you can't kill the bloody thing destroys some of the tension. What's the point of attacking something if it wont die? You might as well just surrender.
Instead, what the kids do is bicker ceaselessly and annoyingly amongst themselves, reducing the film for a fair portion of it to an inane parade of high school cliches, despite the sporadic and deadly appearances of the demonic critter. There is the Alpha male, who wants everyone to follow him, to the black players who feel marginalised by the majority white players, and rounded out by the bespectacled geek, complete with high-pitched voice and hysterical nature. We don't really get to know the characters beyond scattered conversations, especially since there are a dozen of them or more to kill off, and when they die, it's more of an excuse to laugh at the silly gore than to lament the lost opportunities we had to truly "get to know" said annoying characters.
Meanwhile, back on the farm, Uncle Jeb and Billy Bob are busy rigging an outlandish weapon designed to take out the Reaper in revenge for the loss of the young Billy. Jeb (not his real name) listens in on the emergency radio frequencies and catches the calls for help from the students, and figures out that the marauding Reaper is harrassing them. Seizing the opportunity for blood, the heroic duo set out to save the day.
Eventually they arrive at the scene after the arguing students have split up. Knowing that, either way, they're stuck, and that the bus is a trap, they go hell for leather and hope that they don't get eaten. I'll spare revealing any suspenseful outcomes, such as they are. But generally speaking, if you predicted it, it'll happen.
As far as sequels go, this is pretty run-of-the-mill. There aren't any old characters we already know, but because we are given so many new ones, instead of just the two in the original (and these characters are quite well fleshed-out), we don't get to know them, and they are cannon fodder, to all intents and purposes. There is really nothing that stands out, because the plot is cardboard, and you see so much of the Reaper that there is simply no shock value, he doesn't intimidate, and in fact sometimes is more comical than anything else.
The script, as you may expect, is sometimes quite diabolical. There is a fair bit of emphasis on propagating stereotypes rather than having much of anything interesting happen, or on creating any sort of suspense. Many of the lines are preliminaries to being eaten or attacked in some way, and the characters often do stupid things that real people wouldn't do in such a situation - like poking your head up through a hole in the bus's roof to check out the monster. I can imagine myself wanting to look at my friend being eaten, yes. Always wanted to see that!
It's a reasonably entertaining show, in the end, but so little is left to our imagination that there is simply no thinking to be done, and the whole movie is pretty well spoon-fed to us, and this doesn't make it a very satisfying experience. It's like watching a movie that you sub-consciously know from start to finish - actually seeing it only confirms everything. There's plenty of manly hunkness on show, and a couple of cute chicks as well, but as far as movie experiences go, this one's pretty empty.
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I actually enjoy these kind of films, they're like comedies, but they just don't know it!
Great to watch when they finally get to Sky movies, and I don't have to pay, nothing else is on, watch and have a giggle. Other suggestions - 'Wrong Turn', 'Cabin Fever' and 'Dead End' all classic 'lame-ass teen horror comedies' as I like to call them, or 'scary movies' as other seem to.
Ryan74 26.05.2005 17:19
I thought this was the worst film I had ever seen.
NURSE_BETTY 19.05.2004 19:37
great review!! i have watched this and well it was crap!! mair x
Despite the usual symptoms of sequelitis,Jeepers Creepers 2delivers the goods for those ... more
who enjoyed the 2001 original. While establishing the flesh-eating "Creeper" as a new horror icon with frantic action and more elaborate special effects, writer-dir...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Despite the usual symptoms of sequelitis,Jeepers Creepers 2delivers the goods for those ... more
who enjoyed the 2001 original. While establishing the flesh-eating "Creeper" as a new horror icon with frantic action and more elaborate special effects, writer-dir...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Every 23rd Spring, for 23 Days, it gets to eat. Today is the last day of a horrific ... more
feeding frenzy, and the Creeper is still hungry for more!On a deserted highway, a school bus is carrying a basketball team and its cheerleaders back from a triumphant g...
![Jeepers Creepers 2 [DVD] [2003]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78502740.jpg "Jeepers Creepers 2 [DVD] [2003]")
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