Customer Reviews

Jeepers Creepers II [VHS]

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(52)
3 star:		(54)
2 star:		(27)
1 star:		(41)

 

 

Geez, so much animosity for a film that was actually fairly original compared to the goop we've been seeing. I liked the low-budget 80's horror feel to the original "Jeepers Creepers". And I liked the serial killer in this film who turns out to be an ancient evil that lives off the body parts of its victims. There were times during this film I was on the edge of my seat with suspense. And the heroine is one of the strongest leading lady parts since Ripley in "Aliens". So why are so many people put off?

Maybe it's because we've all become jaded with Hollywood. Think about it. When we were kids growing up, most everything we saw at the theaters seemed new and bigger than life. You just knew you were going to see something exciting, even mind-expanding. But it all seems to have been done again and again by Hollywood until there's nothing to do but make sequels and re-makes. The first few films you saw inspired by Romero's "Dead" films all seemed like exciting ways of telling the same story. Then along comes a movie like "28 Days Later", and everyone is angry because we don't follow down the same old path and have the "monsters" be Romero's zombies. I think the same goes for "Jeepers Creepers".

The first few dozen times you see Michael Myers, or Jason, or Freddy kill several hundred young and healthy teens, you think it's new and fresh. But Hollywood is made up now of the grownups who were fed on these genres, and sub-genres, and sub-basement genres. And when they make a film, it always seems like more of the same. But "Jeepers Creepers", though really only Freddy and Jason and Michael dressed in wings and a top hat, still seems fresher to me than say "Ghost Ship", or "Thirteen Ghosts". And with the cornfields and old lady with cats, and the out of the way township, it all seems to have a kind of "Stephen-King-esque" feel to it. A dark peek into a nightmare that's killing you. ...

The 23 days are almost over, and the Creeper is not done feeding. Stalking the farmland, it takes just about anyone it can find alone. But, when it finds a busload of high schoolers heading home from the Big Game, it begins to look like feasting time. But, the Creeper has made an enemy, Jack Taggart, Sr., who wants payback for the loss of his son. Can Taggart defeat the Creeper? I mean, while there are still some students left?

OK, I am not a huge horror fan, and most of the movies leave me cold. But, I love Jeepers Creepers 2! I liked the monster, who is horrifying and can take a licking and keep on handing out punishment. I mean, the punishment this creature takes is horrifying, even as he keeps coming back. And, I loved Taggart, who does not just hide in a hole like a rabbit, but determines to stand up and be a man, no matter the cost. And, I liked the kids, who provide the horror and adventure as they struggle to survive, reacting in their own different and believable ways.

Yeah, if you knew me, you would be surprised that I like this movie. I don't just like it, I love it, and I highly recommend it! Is there going to be a Jeepers Creepers 3? I hope so!!

The Creeper is back, and I am not talking about that feeling I get when my underpants ride up too high...ugh...Victor Salva, who wrote and directed the very popular Jeepers Creepers (2001), takes us back to the horror buffet for a second helping in Jeepers Creepers II, which picks up the very next day to the events in the first movie. A little background...the Creeper is a creature that hibernates in the Earth, and every 23 years it awakens for 23 days to feed on victims, gaining strength to go back into the ground until the next cycle. What exactly is the Creeper? I would speculate it's some kind of demon, given its' supernatural abilities and leathery wings, but it's never really determined within the films, at least to my knowledge.

The film starts off on a farm, with a boy working to secure scarecrows within a cornfield. Upon noticing one of the scarecrows is different than the others, namely that it's moving (yes, Dorothy, he's looking for a heart, among other body parts), the boy soon learns that the scarecrow is none other than the Creeper, and both the Creeper and the boy quickly vanish, much to the father and the boy's older brother's dismay. Cut to a bus full of high school football players, a few cheerleaders, some football staff, and a couple of coaches traveling on a fairly desolate stretch of road (is there any other kind in movies like this?) After the bus suffers a flat tire from rather peculiar means, the occupants soon find themselves under attack from the devious fiend. They try to fend off their attacker, but as we know because we've already seen the first movie, it will not be deterred. It's your flesh it wants, and once it picks you, that's it, buddy boy. Can nothing stop this vile beast, or are all chosen (it chooses its' victims by smell i.e. if you have the right scent for the particular body part its' looking for, you're in trouble) destined to be blue-plate specials?

The film plays up nicely to the first, and the setting of the bus added a real sense of claustrophobia. This follow up to the first does offer a bit more information about the creature, but less than most probably would have preferred, leaving a sense of wanting. The scares, for the most part, were pretty genuine, but I did find the 'jump out and scare you' technique a little overused. We do get to see a lot more of the Creeper in this film than the last, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was for the better. The effects for the Creeper are really sharp, but I felt as far as his abilities went, there seemed discrepancies. Given what it seemed to be able to do, like ripping the roof off an automobile, he seemed to have a decent amount of difficulty getting into the bus. The factor that it used fear to sniff out potential victims was bandied about, so I figure maybe it was just trying to work the kids up. But still, at some points the creeper seemed vulnerable compared to other points when it seemed unstoppable. And something else that kind of bothered me...there seemed to be a number of scenes with bare-chested young men and given the director's past (I am not going to go into it here, look it up), I felt a little creeped out. It seemed like a side of the director was coming out that I really wasn't interested in seeing. And all the silly tension created within the group based on first racial and sexual stereotypes, and then the mirroring of these stereotypes to those 'chosen' and 'not chosen' by the Creeper seemed so very obvious. Where's the subtlety? And I'm no prude, but the excessive use of profanity seemed to get a little out of hand. Sometimes less is more, and in this case, that would have held true. The main thing missing from this film compared to the first was a real likeability of the characters. In the first, we were able to learn about the characters in fairly good detail, spending time with them. Here, most of the characters are presented in an unfavorable light, with little focus on if and why we should like them, giving us little reason to see them make it to the end of the movie. Given the copious number of characters in this film, that kind of intimacy would have been difficult, but not impossible.

As far as stars, I really only recognized character actor Ray Wise, who played a farmer and the father of the first boy abducted in the film. His scenes were great, especially as he tries to avenge his son by use of a pneumatic fence post driver mounted on the back of a pick-up truck. Ahhh, revenge is a plate best served cold, or a six-foot wooden post skewering your enemy's sternum...also, returning from the first film is Justin Long, reprising his role as Darry. Gina Philips, who starred as his sister Trish, declined to come back.

The picture looks really good, in wide screen anamorphic format, and there's quite a bit of special features including commentaries by the director, another by the actor who plays the Creeper along with a makeup effects person and a production illustrator, featurettes on the making of the film, special effects, music, photo galleries, theatrical trailers, deleted scenes and more (whew, dat's a lot of schtuff)...despite the films shortcomings (I noticed a definite lack of atmosphere), fans of the first shouldn't be disappointed, as this film doesn't suffer too much from the dreaded 'sequelitis' (no budget, no story, and a persistent feeling that the only reason the film was made was to cash in on the first) that many do...yeah, I'm talking to you, Starship Troopers 2...

Cookieman108

"Jeepers Creepers 2" made over $63,000,000 at the worldwide boxoffice, more than the first. This time The Creeper wreaks havoc and terror on a bunch of basketball players, their cheerleaders, and coaches when their bus breaks down on an old highway. The film is terrifying, suspenseful, and shocking- everything a horror movie should be. Producers have stated a Part 3 and 4 are in post-production and Victor Salva will be on board again as the writer and director. The Creeper is one of the greatest villins/evil creatures I have ever seen on film so don't watch the movie alone if you scare easily. The single disc comes with audio commentary, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes featurette, the trailer, and more.

I saw this in theatres, possibly the second time ever. Anyway, I have to like it because there's more airborne action, what with the homemade harpoon battle and all. The part where the Creeper chasing the pickup truck would have to be one of my favorite scenes, that next to the part(s) where people are simply talking and people are being swept away in the background. The plot outline itself was very good: After winning a high school basketball championship, a busfull of players and cheerleaders break down with a bizarre and symbolic weapon stuck in their tire. The part then where some of the men are sitting on top of the bus trying to get a tan is kind of interesting, because it's like setting up an involuntary buffet for the Creeper. Anyway, the get going, at night, the same thing happens again, but this time, three people vanish. The coach, the bus driver and the co-coach. Then, when one of the cheerleaders has a strange dream, it suddenly makes sense. The Creeper starts picking them off, and at the same time, a local farmer (Ray Wise) has had his son abducted the previous day. So he builds a giant harpoon gun, and goes "Creeper-Hunting".

So as they start to turn against each other on the bus, there's a very interesting climax.

As great as the first "Jeepers Creepers" was - among the best horror movies of 2001, no forget that: among the best Movies of 2001 - "Jeepers Creepers 2" surpasses it, bloody near blows it out of the water in some respects, giving us what has to be among the top ten or so monster movies of all time.

Picking up just days after the events of its predecessor, during the same 23-day reign of terror the ghastly, winged Creeper embarks on once every twenty-three years, it captivates from the opening frames right through to the end. Centering on the Creeper's crippling of a bus full of high school athletes, cheerleaders (putting cheerleaders in a movie is almost never a bad thing) and school staff on a remote stretch of highway and the subsequent reign of horror, the movie is first rate all the way. Incredible special effects (on par with "Lord Of The Rings", "Freddy Vs. Jason" and the most advanced "Star Wars" effects), solid, believable characterization - often based on the camera angle of a single facial expression as much as on dialogue and actions - and sursprisingly complex inter-character relationships established within a very short time, making maximum use of every minute of screen time; award-worthy cinematography - for example, the Creeper soaring over the moonlit cornfields, a scene that combines the terrifying with the magnificent to perfection. The acting is top-notch, among the best ensemble casts of 2003 (a year that saw a plethora of great performances hit the big and small screens); I admittedly know little about the other work of the cast members - I saw Ray Wise in "Dead End" (a great horror-mystery with Alexandra Holden, one of my personal favorites), but I don't think I've seen any of the others in anything else; Garikayi Mutambirwa, Nicki Aycock and Billy Aaron Brown are especially impressive. Aycock plays a girl who, as the bus passes through the territory of the Creeper, unexpectedly develops psychic powers, including the ability to communicate with the ghosts of previous victims of the monster. The fact that it's never explained how this happened but is made clear how it never happened to her before is preferable to an overexplanation; it's like just being in the mere vicinity of the Creeper can mix up the normal flow of reality, resulting in all kinds of strange phenomenon; ones which defy easy, rational explanations.

The smallest detail is looked after - the lighting captures the beautiful countryside the bus travels through perfectly; the strange weapons of the Creeper are detailed and dead-on realistic; the musical score hits all the right notes (no pun intended). The one potential misstep is the conclusion, which may limit the number of paths a sequel could take; then again, maybe the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing and already have the path planned out for the next chapter. Personally, I'd like to see the next couple be prequels (I think somebody said something about an actual prequel set in the Old West, which I think could be excellent, but that might have just been rumor) and not have the next actual sequel come out until 2024, 23 years to the day after Jeepers 1 was unleashed. The surviving characters from the first two, bring back played by the same performers. It'd be a long time to wait (despite a couple of prequels in the meantime) but think of the anticipation!

I'd be remiss in not pointing out one last observance: this is one where, like in the "Dawn Of the Dead" remake, you see the extreme horrors bringing out the best in some characters and the worst in others. Not to give anything away (this is another of those "in the first twenty-five minutes" disclaimers) but Ray Wise's character, in the very beginning is not very likable at all, but a short while later, in one of those extended facial shots I talked about earlier, you can see every regret he's ever had written across his motionless face. Now That's what happens when great acting combines with great atmosphere. "Jeepers Creepers 2" succeeds on some many levels it's astonishinng.

Like 99.9% of the Earth's population, I too think that the latter half of Jeepers Creepers was nowhere near as scary as the first. But this 'un maintains great suspense and excitement all the way through. Victor Salva's direction is kind of like M. Night Shyamalan gone nasty. This sequel is so much more of an in improvement over the original. Plus is has the benefit of being filmed in widescreen which captures the lonely rural landscape wonderfully.

Set a few days after the first, The Creeper (truly a great villain) is still out on his feeding frenzy and this time he's set his sights on a bus full of High School Basketball jocks and cheerleaders. The bulk of the movie takes place on their broken down bus and manages to provoke the maximum amount of tension from this situation as possible. Kind of like what Joel Schumacher did with Phone Booth. In an interesting side story, Ray Wise (who I will always remember as being one of the bad guys in Robocop) plays a farmer out for revenge on the creeper with a truckload of homemade weapons. He makes for a great hero and you'll definitely be rooting for him.

Also, The Creeper is so much cooler. The opening scene of him disguised as a scarecrow is wicked bad and gone are the ridiculous acrobatic stunts with him jumping over cars and stuff. Instead now the movie focuses on his impressive wingspan and flying skills. He also gets more screen time to show off his sinister personality, which can only be a good thing.

Freddy vs Jason deserved to be knocked off the No. 1 spot only by a good movie. And this is it. Jeepers Creepers 2 has great action scenes and a macabre sense of humor. You must go see.

I'm afraid I'm going to be rather harsh in my assessment of this extremely needless sequel. Writer/director Victor Salva obviously does not agree with one of my central tenets of effective horror: once you show us the monster, the monster can no longer frighten us. The original Jeepers Creepers started out extremely creepy then went downhill midway through - once we saw the true face of the Creeper. This sequel's opening scene is a good one, featuring the Creeper in his black trench coat and hat posing as a scarecrow, but there is not one remotely unsettling scene that takes place after that. Salva concentrated on making the monster uglier and slimier, obviously counting on that to scare us - but it doesn't. We've already seen all this before.

Supposedly, there was not going to be a sequel to Jeepers Creepers; admittedly, it's hard to make a follow-up to a film featuring a creature that only appears every 23 years. Here, though, we are told that events follow immediately those of the first movie - it's the end of the same 23-day period. Of course, the premise here is very different (and I am still very disappointed that the ultra-gorgeous Gina Philips did not have a part in this film). You've got a school bus full of very annoying teenagers returning home from their state basketball championship win (and why there are only three cheerleaders, I have no idea); they break down in the middle of nowhere and soon find themselves harassed and attacked by this terrifying creature with huge wings, sharp claws, and a pretty nasty appetite. Of course, there's no way they can figure out just what the monster is - unless, of course, some girl falls into a temporary fugue state and learns all about him in a dream. We see this dream, and it doesn't include half of the information the girl imparts to her classmates. There's no explanation as to how this girl learns all of this, and that really annoys me.

The film quickly becomes an exercise in tedium as the Creeper attacks, pauses, and attacks again while the teenagers try to stay alive, argue whether or not to try and leave the bus, and fight among themselves. These trivial teenaged arguments are supposed to make these characters seem "real" and thereby make us feel connected to them. Personally, it just made me hate the whole lot of them and yearn desperately for their deaths. Unfortunately, I really couldn't even pull for the Creeper, as he really just doesn't appeal to me as a monster. All of the close-up shots of him tend to make me feel as if Salva is trying to force me into really being horrified by him, but the fact is I really have little feeling for the Creeper one way or the other. To me, the storyline of Jeepers Creepers 2 was really just an excuse for creating tons of special effects - much, much more than we saw in the original film. The visual effects are pretty good for the most part (except for the one decapitation scene, which Salva managed to turn into something just plain silly), but special effects should serve to augment the story, not take its place.

It's true that there are a bunch of special features included on the DVD - some fifteen minutes of deleted or edited scenes, two commentaries, and a whole host of making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes, but no amount of special features can make up for a weak and disappointing film.

This is one of my favorite scary movies. I rarely like the second movie more than the first.

I've read some reviews on the Creepers movies, bad reviews, and I gotta say I don't understand what these people want out of a horror movie! Reality? I don't think that's even possible. I loved these two movies and I'll be right there for the third, money in hand, waiting in line for a ticket. This was a great movie to just sit back in the dark with a large bowl of popcorn and enjoy. It's not for someone who is looking for some deep, intellectual, that could really happen, film.