So what's it all about?
Every 23 years a creature comes out for 23 days and feeds on humans to
replace his own decaying body parts. Creepers 2 is the sequel to Jeepers
Creepers and takes place over the last two days of the 23-day period.
In Jeepers Creepers 2, a school bus full of basketball players and
cheerleaders is on the way home. The Creeper disables the bus in the
middle of nowhere and after killing off the teachers in rapid succession,
starts in on the school kids. A farmer, whose son is taken at the
beginning of the film, comes to their aid with a home-made harpoon gun.
Is it any good?
The actors are all unkown and since there are so many off them, there
are no real lead actors, although a small group does stand out. The
characters, however, are your standard mix of jocks, pom-pom girls and
geeks. The undoubted star is The Creeper, and midway through the movie you
start rooting for him to kill as many kids as possible.
The special effects surrounding The Creeper are extremely well done.
He has huge wings and does a lot of flying (very realistic), including
impressive bombing runs when he attacks the victims. The long, dark trench
coat is quite ominous but, for some reason, the scariest part is the hat
he wears and his wisps of long blonde hair. The Creeper is more wet and
slimy in the sequel and his mouth, a smaller version of the Alien mouth,
is also quite terrifying.
Initially The Creeper seems un-killable: He gets a javelin straight
through the head, then rips his own head off and replaces it with an
unlucky students'. He also gets shot several times with a high velocity
home-made harpoon gun and seems none the worse for wear. So it's a bit of
an anti-climax that he is incapacitated when he goes head first through a
car windscreen.
The instrumental soundtrack is used very effectively, building
anticipation before an attack, increasing the pulse rate during the
killings and relaxing a person during the few quiet moments.
How scary is it? Scarier than your average teen horror movie, but not
as frightening as Alien.
Score: 2.5/5
How about those special features?
Creepers 2 does really well here. In the setup you get the option of
subtitles for the hard of hearing and an audio commentary. You can also
watch the movie with commentaries by the writer, director and cast, and a
separate commentary by The Creeper!
In the Special features section there's an extensive range of theatre
trailers, TV spots and teaser trailers. Next up is a gallery of still
images from the movie and make-up and location shots. This is followed by
a couple of deleted scenes, which, for a change, I think should have been
added. One particular scene shows "The Creeper Graveyard" with corpses of
Indians and soldiers from the BC era, indicating that the Creeper has been
around for literally thousands of years.
There's also number of extra documentaries including a making of, and
a day in the life of the cast and crew called "A Day in Hell". The segment
on the soundtrack is quite interesting - a full orchestra is used and the
director discusses the process in great detail. One really develops a much
greater appreciation of film music after seeing how much work it involves.
More features include the making of The Creeper, which shows
storyboarding, digital and wire effects and the amount of make-up
involved. On some days it took up to five hours to get The Creeper ready!
Perhaps the best feature is the storyboard of a scene that was never
filmed, played in sequence to the music, which is surprisingly scary!
Score: 4/5
Best part:
Any of the scenes where The Creeper gets shot with the harpoon gun.
Best quote:
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Jeepers
Creepers 2