Susan Granger’s review of “Jeepers Creepers 2” (MGM/UA)
Jeepers, he’s back! Every 23 years, an ancient, pointy-toothed, winged monster called the Creeper comes out of hibernation and spends the next 23 days feasting on human flesh. The sequel picks up where the original left off. This time, on a lonely highway, the Creeper (Jonathan Breck) blows out the tires on a school bus filled with high-school basketball players, cheerleaders and a few adults, who are returning from a state championships. Predictably, the grown-ups and girls are the first to go. Then it’s the stranded boys, many of whom strip down to their underwear to sun themselves on the roof of a bus. But as menacing shadows appear in the moonlight, their only hope of rescue is an obsessed, enraged farmer (Ray Wise) whose 12 year-old son was one of the Creeper’s first victims. The suspense revolves around who dies next. But there’s an even more disturbing subtext to writer/director Victor Salva’s plot. Back in 1988, Salva pleaded guilty to molesting a 12 year-old actor. He was convicted as a child molester and served 15 months. Salva has issued statements regretting his past behavior but, since then, he has routinely featured endangered boys in his off-beat films, beginning with “Powder” (1995) about a rural teen whose skin is ghostly white. While this vulnerability context may serve as Salva’s post-prison therapy, an uncomfortable amount of screen time is devoted to buff, shirtless youths. More than the scare scenes, that gave me the creeps, along with remembering that actor Ray Wise previously played the child-molesting father in David Lynch’s TV series “Twin Peaks.” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Jeepers Creepers 2” is a malignant 3. And you know there’s going to be another Creeper horror thriller, if only to complete the trilogy.
