Quality shock time

You could number the horror films with the imprimatur of Francis Ford Coppola on the fingers of one severely maimed hand, but having acted as executive producer on both the Jeepers Creepers movies, one can only assume he is revisiting his few youthful flirtations with the genre (Dementia 13).

Victor Salva continues the saga of the winged demon, The Creeper, who awakes every 23rd spring to feast on human beings for 23 days before retiring once again.

The victims this time around are a busload of high-school football players and their cheerleaders returning from a successful game in an appropriately remote part of the country.

Having picked out from a burst tyre a sharp object that resembles a Ninja star fashioned from human bones and skin, various members of the party are soon being picked out themselves by the Creeper, who has been lying in wait in a neighbouring cornfield posing as a scarecrow.

Better-than-average production values and a decent set of performances (especially from Ray Wise as the farmer whose youngest son is the Creeper’s first victim), lift an otherwise standard slasher into another realm.

Unfortunately, with the mystery of the Creeper’s identity — upon which the first movie traded so successfully — revealed, the only thing left for Salva to do is increase the gore and limb-removal and up the ante on teenage hysterics.

All of which he does with some style, providing enough quality shock time to satisfy the target audience with an additional dose of humour (“You were waving pom-poms this morning. Now all of a sudden you’re a psychic hotline?”) and a climax that puts an aerial spin on Ahab’s encounter with Moby Dick. Not bad at all.

Jeepers Creepers 2
Cert: cert15