The Italian Job hops between Venice and Austria. Frodo and his friends cavort throughout Middle-earth. Neo explores the Matrix. But Jeepers Creepers 2 seems content to flounder around a broken-down, yellow school bus stranded on a country road. Granted, while the bus itself may not be all that much to look at, what’s inside—and outside—it is. Inside, a handful of high school football players and cheerleaders huddle in terror. Their chaperons have disappeared, violently snatched away in the blink of an eye. Outside, perched on the roof is an inexhaustible, indestructible winged beast called The Creeper. Every 23 years it awakes to feast on human flesh for 23 days, replacing its wounded organs and limbs with those it tears from its victims. Chaos has erupted in the bus, and The Creeper waits for an opportune moment to sweep in and begin the slaughter. It doesn’t know, though, that the father of one its victims, a heartsick farmer named Taggart, is following fast after it, looking for an opportunity of his own.
positive elements: Several characters make selfless attempts to save others’ lives. A racially charged comment by a star player is portrayed in a negative light. A cheerleader wisely notes that fear brings out a person’s true character, be it good or bad.
spiritual content: A cheerleader receives miraculous visions in which a dead boy warns her about The Creeper.
sexual content: A football fight song includes crass, anatomical references. A player is repeatedly ridiculed for supposedly being homosexual (he isn’t). Someone cracks a joke about male genitalia.
violent content: Jeepers Creepers 2 is of the “show, don’t tell” school of filmmaking and that means its violence is often explicit, extended and bloody. The most graphic moment occurs when The Creeper is stabbed through the eye with a javelin (the camera lingers on the beast as it vigorously tries to tug the shaft from its cranium). It eventually rips the spike out, along with a large section of its head. A teen is then graphically decapitated (his mutilated body writhes for some time afterward) and his head is grossly used to replace The Creeper’s marred skull. Supernatural visions include shots of a boy with a gory head wound and a teen’s gaping eye sockets. A jock is killed when The Creeper throws a shuriken made of bone into his head. Another has his arm pinned to a tree by a knife. Taggart repeatedly blasts The Creeper with a homemade harpoon gun. When he then tries to drag the monster down to earth with a steel cable and his truck, the vehicle gets demolished. Later, he stabs the creature numerous times. People are snatched up by The Creeper and its assaults leave several bloodied. A football player shoots The Creeper with a flare gun. Frightened jocks violently shove each other during an altercation. The Creeper crashes into a speeding truck, causing it to flip and explode , severing several of the beast’s limbs in the process.
crude or profane language: Over 40 uses of the f-word, and about 35 other profanities and crudities. God and Jesus’ names are profaned at least 10 times. Crude slang for male and female sex organs is used half-a-dozen times. An obscene gesture pops up (literally).
drug and alcohol content: Cheerleaders get caught smoking by the football coach and are soundly chastised. But the impact of his lecture is diminished when the bus driver lights up as well. When strange reports regarding The Creeper’s attacks reach police, one officer wonders if somebody is “burning a marijuana field.” A football player ridicules a cheerleader’s visions by asking, “Why don’t you clean out your bong?”
other negative elements: Football players urinate by the side of the road and one complains that a teammate has sprayed his foot. A jock talks about how he tried to steal a car from a bar.
conclusion: Jeepers Creepers 2 obviously aspires to be more than just a by-the-numbers horror flick. Reels are devoted to claustrophobic confrontations between students that reveal their underlying prejudices and sins. “I wanted to see if I could make a film like [Alfred Hitchcock’s] Lifeboat,” said director Victor Salva, “which has 12 characters trapped in one location and captures all the drama that goes on among them.” Nice goal, but the sorry stuff that ended up onscreen is as far from Hitchcock as whales are from Nebraska. Salva’s artistic ambitions get torn apart and devoured by gore, obscenity and tired cliché.
