Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)
Cast: Jonathan Beck, Ray Wise, Travis Schiffner, Jaii Isaac Sanchez
Director: Victor Salva
Synopsis: Finally, a Hollywood horror film that puts the "H' back into Horror! Top Draw
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

 

This sequel to the sleeper horror hit of 2001 arrived carrying glowing advance word from those fortunate enough to have seen early screenings. Did it really deserve the increasingly enthusiastic whispers suggesting that it was one of those rare horror sequels to surpass its predecessor?

In a word...

Emphatically.

Fans of genuine horror—as opposed to juvenile horror (Freddy vs. Jason, anybody?)—should relish this refreshingly old-fashioned exercise in pared-down terror. Victor Salva wisely abandons the increasingly fashionable habit of explaining every last detail to the audience and instead concentrates on delivering exactly what a horror film ought to deliver: ninety minutes of relentless suspense and fear.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

The approach works magnificently.

Anyone hoping for a film that owes more than a passing debt to Jaws and The Birds should find themselves very pleasantly surprised.

The premise remains disarmingly simple.

Every twenty-three years a monstrous creature known only as The Creeper awakens to feed. This time its menu consists of a busload of high-school basketball players returning home from a tournament.

That's really all the audience needs to know.

What follows is a remarkably efficient rollercoaster of tension, shocks and sustained menace.

The opening sequence immediately establishes the film's intentions. A farming family finds itself under sudden attack as The Creeper swoops from the darkness in one of the most effective openings to any recent horror film.

The influence of Spielberg's Jaws is unmistakable. Where Bruce stalked his victims beneath dark waters, Salva's winged predator hunts from the blackness of the night sky. The stranded school bus effectively becomes this film's equivalent of the doomed Orca, while The Creeper's rows of razor-sharp teeth prove every bit as intimidating as those of Spielberg's famous shark.

The important difference is that Spielberg largely concealed his monster.

Salva doesn't.

Remarkably, he still manages to generate genuine suspense.

Perhaps the film's greatest strength lies in what it deliberately avoids.

Gone are the obligatory wisecracking teenagers, the token stoner, the endless stream of self-conscious one-liners and the inevitable skinny-dipping sequence that modern horror seemed contractually obliged to include. Better still, there is no instantly identifiable "final girl" destined to defeat the monster. Throughout the film, it remains genuinely uncertain who will survive and who will not.

Even the soundtrack deserves praise. Rather than drowning every scene beneath the now-obligatory barrage of heavy metal, Salva allows silence and atmosphere to do much of the work. Likewise, the gore is kept under surprisingly firm control, the director preferring relentless menace over elaborate splatter.

The similarities to Hitchcock's The Birds are perhaps less obvious than those to Jaws, beyond the fact that both films feature winged creatures relentlessly terrorising ordinary people, but the influence is nevertheless there.

Jeepers Creepers 2 succeeds on almost every level.

It is beautifully photographed, tightly paced and consistently suspenseful. From the wonderfully atmospheric opening amongst the scarecrows until its final moments, the tension rarely lets up. More importantly, the film never feels the need to burden itself with lengthy explanations or convoluted mythology. It simply gets on with frightening its audience.

What a refreshing change.

Viewed alongside the hugely successful Freddy vs. Jason, the contrast becomes even more striking. Despite its monsters, Freddy vs. Jason scarcely functions as horror at all. Freddy and Jason have gradually evolved into pop-culture celebrities whose chief purpose is to generate laughs rather than fear. They have become objects of amusement instead of genuine terror.

Victor Salva takes precisely the opposite approach.

The Creeper is never invited to become the audience's friend.

He exists for one reason only.

To frighten us.

For those of us who still believe horror should primarily concern itself with suspense, dread and genuine terror rather than comedy, Jeepers Creepers 2 comes as a wonderfully welcome surprise. It demonstrates that mainstream American horror is still capable of producing a film that aims squarely at the audience's nerves rather than its funny bone.

Let's hope Hollywood was paying attention.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this marked the beginning of a return to horror films designed to scare their audiences again rather than merely entertain them with knowing jokes, self-conscious irony and special effects that simply make people say, "Wow."

If so, the genre could hardly have asked for a better place to begin.