There's a certain common point all horror movie sequels share. Since the monster has already been seen, the tension won't be built on suspense, the monster will be bigger, badder, and seen much more often in much more detail, and, of course, the body count will be higher.

True to the form of sequel, all of these elements are present in "Jeepers Creepers 2," which flew onto local screens across the nation on the Labor Day weekend.

Although none of the original cast (other than Justin Long in a cameo role) are back and a lot of the elements of the first film – like the 40s song, "Jeepers Creepers," that was always playing somewhere when the monster attacked and the mysterious psychic whose dreams could predict the creatures movements – are gone, once again we have a creature with no name that can't talk and can't be killed that's been around for thousands of years even though no one noticed. Once again there is no attempt at an explanation as to where it came from, why it can only come out to feed once every 23 years or even what, exactly, it is.

That's because the film begins where the original left off, with Jeepers still on a rampage. Only now it's the 22nd day of the 23 days he's allowed to eat. Since time's a wasting, there's no more messing around in a strange panel truck frightening motorists. As the film opens, Jeepers is posing as a scarecrow in a cornfield in order to scare a farm kid (Shaun Fleming) and then fly away with him. This not only irritates the kid's father, (Ray Wise), but it motivates him to design a weapon and then hunt the creature down.

Meanwhile, a bus full of high school football players and cheerleaders fresh from a championship win, are flying along highway 9 through the middle of nowhere, when suddenly one of the tires has a mysterious blow out.

Even though the team coach and the bus driver have been listening to radio reports about all the havoc being wrought by Jeepers on highway 9, neither they nor the teens suspect they're in trouble until one of the cheerleaders (Nicki Lynn Aycox) has a prophetic dream about the creature. Of course, no one believes her until all the adults are suddenly swept away, and they find themselves trapped inside the bus with Jeepers peeping at them through the windows.

Up until the enraged and revenge bent father shows up with his heavily armed pick up truck, most of the film takes place in and around the bus while the teens argue over whether it would be better for them to stay inside and get eaten one at a time or go outside and get it all at once. Even when Wise does show up, the climactic fight is as much a waste of time as the film's conclusion – which is an obvious set up for yet one more sequel – is unsatisfying.

Unlike the first "Jeepers Creepers," there are no scenes in which teens poke their heads down pipes they don't have the sense to avoid or try and escape in cars that won't go into gear, and there's no mysterious cave with bodies sewn to the walls for no particular reason either. Since everyone already knows what the creature looks like and what it can do, there's not much attempt at concealment or mystery, and the scares in this movie are more like pop up monsters in a carnival haunted house. Some of the special effects work quite well, though, the best being the scene on top of the bus where Jeepers has to rip half of his head off to get a javelin one of the teen stuck through his eye out. In order to repair the damage, he eats one of the football player's heads, which comes through his body and pops out his neck to become a new monster head.

Now there's something you just don't see every day.

But despite the fact that in the original "Jeepers Creepers," director/writer Victor Salva created a novel creature that isn't a celtic driven maniac, dream phantom or water ghost mama's boy to work with, he fails to do anything novel with it in the sequel. This is a by the numbers horror film, which is why none of the players in the no-name cast stand out or are particularly memorable, and most of the computer effects have been seen before. In fact, even there's plenty of action and even a couple of surprises, "Jeepers Creepers 2" looks and feels like all the "Halloween/Nightmare on Elm Street/Friday the 13th" films it was obviously copied from. Partly this is the fault of Salva's predicable script. But mostly it's because the film was made as a piece of slick formula eye candy without a lot of substance.

"Jeepers Creepers" is rated R for violence.