by MARK SLUTSKY

There was something very pleasing about 2001’s Jeepers Creepers. While it wasn’t really a great movie by any stretch, it was a success as a horror B-movie: surprisingly scary, with a couple of really good sequences, like the drawn-out opening on an empty country highway. And there was the baddie, a flesh-eating monster in a trenchcoat, with several dozen sewn-together cadavers in his basement and a huge, weird old truck (for some reason, the truck seems important to mention). The inevitable sequel hits screens this weekend, written and directed by the original guy, Victor Salva, and while it’s hardly surprising for a horror sequel to drop off in quality, Jeepers Creepers 2 is still a letdown.

If you recall, the first movie was about a couple of kids who encounter a fearsome, organ-harvesting demon, who, every 23 years, emerges from the earth to feast on teenagers for 23 days. The sequel picks up several days after the action of the first. On another strip of desolate road somewhere, a football team is returning on a school bus from a triumphant big game. A tire mysteriously blows out, and our heroes soon learn that their breakdown is the work of none other than the jeepy-creepy demon himself, intent on feasting on another bunch of adolescents. All is not lost, though, as a grief-crazed farmer (Ray Wise, who made an appearance here recently for Fantasia), his son snatched up by the demon, shows up with a crazy automated spear gun of his own making, looking to shoot the baddie down.

Not a bad premise: broken-down school bus, excitable teens, violent farmer, flesh-eating monster. Yet Jeepers Creepers 2 somehow fails to deliver. At least the kids in the first one had chemistry; here the cheerleaders are dull and the dudes are stiffs. Even Wise seems like he’s in too much of a foul mood to make watching him any fun. There are barely any scares, and, worst of all, the monster’s big creepy truck is missing! It, and the scares, are sadly both AWOL.

Jeepers Creepers 2 opens Friday, Aug. 29

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