Horror Fest Day Three: B Eating U: Jeepers Creepers 2

To be quite blunt, I fucking hated Jeepers Creepers.

When it started, I had the sneaking suspicion it was going to be a Texas Chain Saw Massacre kind of retread, and for a while, it seemed like that's exactly what would happen.

And then the monster shows up, and suddenly I wish it had been a Chain Saw ripoff.

The premise was interesting, but to be honest, it was more interesting than the movie itself. Watching two kids running around and exposition getting shoehorned in wherever possible really killed the possibility of being engaged in the movie, even after we knew why the Jeeper Creeper wanted the boy. And the ending was just stupid; I mean, okay, I get it, you kill the hero, good for you, no eyeballs, Jeeper Creeper wins, movie over.

So needless to say I was in no hurry to see the second one. What changed my mind was a phone call from my at the time roommate, who'd just seen it with an audience (not just an audience, "that" audience, the mythical congregation of just the right people with just the right movie), and he told me about one scene, where the Jeeper Creeper is hanging upside down outside a bus, and choosing which members of the disposable teen brigade inside that he's going to eat.

But the Jeeper Creeper doesn't just look at them. When he picks one, he winks, or smiles suggestively, or, my personal favorite, he gives them the one hand "gun click" point. And that alone sold me. The Jeeper Creeper was actually a character, and not some faceless spectre out to eat kids.

The kids aren't important in this movie at all. Even the "psychic" character, who exists only to give these walking sacrifices information that the audience already knows, only gets two scenes. Everyone else is a walking stereotype: the "is he or isn't he gay" player, the pinnings of racism white dude, the three black guys, the nerdy team manager, the tough bus driver, the jock just waiting to get his head pulled off. They're all there, on a bus, waiting to get picked off on the last day of the Jeeper Creeper's 23 day feeding festival.

But this time, we get an Ahab to follow, and it's Leland fucking Palmer! That's right, Ray Wise is some farmer who happens to have a foundry in his barn, and when his youngest son becomes Jeeper Creeper food, he builds himself a harpoon gun and goes a-hunting. This is useful, because a running Jeeper Creeper is pretty boring, but since he can now fly, we have ourselves a ball game, folks.

You can probably tell by the way I keep calling him the Jeeper Creeper that I don't take this movie too seriously, but there are enough outlandish set pieces to keep things going, and the movie doesn't waste time with exposition. That bus is on the ground in twenty minutes, and the Jeeper Creeper is taunting and pulling his head off and eating ASAP.

If you find yourself ever wondering "should I check out Jeepers Creepers?" the answer is no. Drop the zero and make with the hero, and that's Jeepers Creepers 2.