[3.9]
Ray Wise may “headline” this horror sequel, but his one-note character is probably the least essential (at least emotionally) in the cast. As the father of one of the monster’s victims, his sole motivation is to kill the monster, even if it takes the lives of him and his other son to do it. But let’s forget about his story (which is the one that bookends the movie, but provides none of the film’s charm). The true meat of this film is the busload of football players, cheerleaders, and coaches who get stuck on the side of the road, surrounded by cornfields, after the bus gets two flat tires. Of course, this is the monster’s doing, it’s technique for trapping prey. I never saw the first film, so I don’t really understand who or what this killer is, why it stalks kids, etc, but the script manages to catch us latecomers up with some handy synopsis fed to one of the characters in her dreams (she tells us that these creatures can’t be killed, that they come back every 23 years for 23 days, and that they always get their victims). It’s that one detail, that the creature actually picks out its prey, that leads to the most interesting dynamics between characters, as they argue whether they should just abandon the chosen kids to the creature, allowing the rest to flee to safety. The choices of these characters are actually pretty interesting, and unlike your typical creature feature, these kids think through their options pretty well. Sure, there is the occasional kid who wanders outside the bus when they shouldn’t, and peeks through the hole in the roof when they know the monster is right there, but overall, I can’t think of any better decisions they could have made.
There’s a delightful amount of homoerotic tension here as well, with these uber-masculine athletes sunbathing shirtless on the roof of the bus, pissing together in the grass, and then being targeted (far more frequently than the ladies) by the predator dressed like a lecherous flasher. A lot of the tension on the bus centers around one racist-lite character who thinks the Black kids are hogging all the attention on the team, as well as a quiet back-of-the-bus team manager who gets picked on for being gay (even though he insists he’s not). Unfortunately, during the drawn-out climax, these characters get sort of forsaken for the action (which centers mostly around the Creeper and Ray Wise) and there is no satisfactory or clever resolution to their personal issues. Besides the return of focus to the blasé Ray Wise character, the film also lets us down with its winged villain. There are many moments when the movie tries to mimic the excesses of Freddy Krueger (with the monster leering after the kids, licking its lips, taunting its prey), but without witty dialogue to keep the character humorous, these moments just serve to de-horrify the monster. It’s motives are unexplored and it can seemingly not be killed, making it just another boring ‘force of nature’. If that’s the case, I would have preferred to see the monster even less, keeping it more terrifying in the shadows. Honestly, there were few scares in this piece, but the evocative atmosphere of its isolated midwest locale and interesting reactions of its characters to their dilemma made this stand out as one of the more unique of modern horror films.
burning retina 