JEEPERS CREEPERS 2

A bus travels through the desolate American countryside carrying a college basketball team, fresh from their recent victory in the youth championship they participated in. The celebrations are abruptly interrupted by the sudden and mysterious bursting of two tires, an incident that forces the group to first slow down and eventually stop their journey home altogether. Stranded in the middle of the night on a deserted road, the boys discover they are the chosen victims of a predator who has skillfully trapped them solely for the purpose of exterminating them. The Creature hunting them is a demonic being that awakens from its slumber every 23 years to spend 23 days of wakefulness feeding on poor and defenseless human victims. The college students are nothing more than the main course of the demon's last supper, about to disappear for the next 23 years at the end of what is its last hunting day. When all hope for the boys seems to have vanished, help arrives in the form of the father of a child kidnapped and killed the day before, determined to do anything to end the life of the being that tore away the affection of his son... The long-awaited sequel to "Jeepers Creepers – The Devil's Song" (a box office hit in American theaters a couple of seasons ago) proves convincing only during the first few minutes of projection: the opening sequence captures the viewer's attention, pleasantly struck both by the rhythm of the scene and by the presence on screen of the great Ray Wise (tormented and diabolical father of Laura Palmer in David Lynch's TV masterpiece, "Twin Peaks"). Once the initial introduction is over, the positive expectations begin to crumble minute by minute: the attempt to create a situation that is both new and terrifying, at least in the intentions of young Victor Salva (already director of the prequel), begins to clash with the weak framework at the base of the entire structure of the film. The choice to revolve the film around a group of boys trapped in a bus, in fact, does not yield the expected results in the long run: despite a more or less original context, the sensation of claustrophobia and tension that other films focused on the forced confinement of their protagonists in "cramped spaces" have imprinted on the viewer this time is only a mirage. It is enough to run through the memory of the abandoned houses in films like "Night of the Living Dead" by George Romero or "The Evil Dead" by Sam Raimi to realize the different atmosphere that pervades these masterpieces. The impression is that in "Jeepers Creepers – The Devil's Song 2" the opposite result to the desired one has been achieved, since for most of the film, instead of feeling anguish, there is a constant sensation of being in a static, immobile, and flat situation. The excessive number of actors on stage (the boys locked in the bus are too many!) never allows the public to deeply empathize with the story's protagonists: even an attentive and scrupulous viewer will have a hard time recognizing the faces of the young people, to the point of wondering more than once if the actor in the frame is a new face or one already seen in some previous sequence. And without empathy, there is no participation. Even the demonic Creature that dominates the screen for most of the film struggles to be believable: despite trying several times to win over the public with close-up shots, bad and threatening expressions, even attempting to mimic the great boogeymen of the past, the result is barely sufficient. Who did not catch a clumsy reference to the mythical dark humor of Freddy when the monster starts licking a bus window in a rather ridiculous way? Even in this case, the comparison does not hold. On the level of special effects, the film does not offer particular surprises: a few good makeup effects are countered by a series of sequences that do not seem to be sufficiently cared for, especially when the demon is shown in flight. Moreover, the choice to limit bloodshed on screen contributes to further diluting the effect of a whole series of situations that, even spiced up with the most extreme gore, would hardly succeed in terrifying the viewer. Inevitably, the comparison with the prequel arises: although it did not make people cry out in wonder, "Jeepers Creepers – The Devil's Song" had convinced with a solid and well-built plot, a dark and oppressive atmosphere, a relentless pace, capable of providing moments of pleasant shiver, and a black and hopeless ending that had managed to leave its mark. In the case of this "Jeepers Creepers – The Devil's Song 2," something did not work as it should have. Once again, we are faced with a film full of narrative and structural inconsistencies that leave even the least sophisticated viewers open-mouthed. Overlooking the now-worn cliché of the "no-service area where no cell phone can communicate with the outside world," the elements that underscore the lightness of some passages in the screenplay are numerous: the ability of a girl in the group to dream of past victims, for example, reveals itself, despite the interesting premises, to be only an obvious and forced narrative pretext to explain to the students in the bus the "feeding" habits of the Monster. And one could continue by emphasizing the superficiality with which topics such as homosexuality or racism are touched upon... It is also impossible to forgive a series of logical inconsistencies that afflict the film: it happens, for example, to see how the same boys, in a panic during a scene for the impossibility of escaping and opening the blocked doors of the bus, manage to get off calmly and without the slightest effort in the immediately following sequence. Observing then the formidable demon (of whom we should be so afraid) agitating in the sky harpooned like a fish or worse still seeing it hopping on the grass like a mad frog after losing a leg and an arm, unintentionally provides some moments of light comedy. It is a pity to note, film after film, the tremendous difficulty that cinema seems to have in recent years in inventing new and increasingly chilling nightmares. "Jeepers Creepers – The Devil's Song 2" confirms this unstoppable trend because it does not convince, because it leaves the viewer perplexed, and because once again it is not what a horror cinema fan desires most: a nightmare to be afraid of and to fall in love with without any reservation.