Jeepers Creepers 2

I actually enjoyed the first Jeepers Creepers, on some deep, sadistic. Darkness Falls level. But, regrettably, the sequel is just awful. The Creeper (as the monster is apparently called) has one day left to get as much food as he can before return to hibernate for 23 years, so he sabotages a school bus filled with teenagers and proceeds to take forever in collecting his food. Why he wastes time grabbing people one at a time rather than just killing everyone all at once is never explored. It's not interesting, it's not funny, and it's not scary. In fact, the only thing disturbing about it is in the bizarre homoerotic subtext that floats beneath the whole movie. Like the busful of football players (or basketball players or something) who spend half the movie with no shirts on, constantly taunting each other for possible homosexuality. Or the ungodly long scene where the Creeper eyes the players, ignoring the three cheerleaders, sniffing out which players it wants to eat, winking and smiling at them, and even dragging its tongue across the window when it finds one it especially likes. In any event, the audience I saw it with shared my reaction: stunned silence, punctuated by snickers of derision when something "scary" would happen. Really, writer/director Victor Salva had to have been going for laughs, because he uses the Naked Gun technique of harmless conversation in the foreground, painful action in the background for half of the Creeper's attacks. Hopefully, this franchise ends here.

Rating: DUD