'Jeepers Creepers II' is uninspired and forgettable

"Jeepers Creepers II" opens with a welcome bit of horror nostalgia, as a farm boy realizes that a frightening creature is disguised as a scarecrow. Soon enough, there's a perilous pursuit and the monster snatches him away for good, in a well-paced and momentarily stylish scene.

MOVIE REVIEW

JEEPERS CREEPERS II

DIRECTOR: Victor Salva

CAST: Ray Wise, Jonathan Breck, Eric Nenninger, Travis Schiffner

RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes

RATING: R for horror-violence and language

WHERE: Alderwood 7, Cinema 17, Everett 9, Factoria, Galaxy Tacoma 6, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Issaquah 9, Longston Place 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza 12, Redmond Town Center, Valley Drive-in, Woodinville 12

GRADE: D

Soon enough, however, this very strange (and very boring) stand-alone sequel to the modestly successful 2001 original becomes routine. Too bad, because the old-fashioned opening suggests that the movie will be in the Grand Guignol tradition, but the movie has only Guignol and lacks Grand altogether.

Opening title cards inform us that every 23rd spring, an implacably evil and unstoppable creature, known as the Creeper (Jonathan Breck), feasts on the internal organs of fearful teenagers for 23 days; then he hibernates for 23 years. Visually, he's inspired -- a cross between the "Alien" creature, a giant bat and Freddy Krueger, and like Hannibal Lecter, he (or "it") consolidates the remains of his victims so resourcefully that he might have a future teaching arts and crafts.

Most of the movie's endless 103 minutes focus on the Creeper's attempts to dispatch an especially annoying group of students stranded on a bus along a lengthy stretch of highway. The last time a movie was confined to a bus, the result was the efficient thriller "Speed," but here the bus doesn't even move -- an indication of the film's lethargic pacing.

There's also a back-story involving the revenge-seeking father of the boy the Creeper snatched in the opening scene. He's played by Ray Wise, normally indispensable in movies like this, but reduced here to playing a sullen slug as he plots the Creeper's doom.

The whole movie strikes the same dreary note, bereft of genuine horror or suspense, with only a few nice shots of the Creeper flying and an amusingly grotesque bit where he deals with a javelin lodged through his skull.

But there's a disturbing undercurrent. Writer-director Victor Salva did jail time years ago for sexually abusing a young boy, which gives the horror scenes (and plot elements dealing with homophobia) a nasty tinge. Even scarier: once-great Francis Ford Coppola serves as executive producer.

Scandals aside, Salva's work here, like everything else he's made, is uninspired and forgettable, and he fails to pull off an admittedly difficult task: generate genuine suspense in a confined setting by manipulating both restricted uses of space as well as audience expectations.

What results is a movie as vacuous as the characters on screen. It's not often a movie makes you yearn for the energy and half-baked artistry of "Freddy vs. Jason," but there you have it.

Paul West is a Seattle free-lance writer and movie reviewer. He can be reached at pwfilm@hotmail.com.