eepers Creepers was a surprise hit when it opened under the radar in the summer of 2001—a mix of old-school horror and newfangled creature feature, with a strong focus on character. Two years later, writer/director Victor Salva returns with the sequel, Jeepers Creepers 2, which picks up the story with a new set of characters, a new premise and a new style of filmmaking.
This time around, the Creeper (Jonathan Breck)—a winged, immortal flesh-eating demon—is stalking a stranded busload of high-school athletes and cheerleaders, while being pursued by a vengeful farmer (Ray Wise). As in the earlier film, Salva has taken pains to build his horror movie around strong characters and their volatile interaction in a movie he likens to a combination of The Birds and Lifeboat.
The cast is full of fresh faces, including Eric Nenninger (Scott Braddock), Josh Hammond (Jake Spencer), Kasan Butcher (Kimball "Big K" Ward), Marieh Delfino (Rhonda Truitt), Nicki Aycox (Minxie Hayes) and Lena Cardwell (Chelsea Farmer). The cast took a moment during filming last year to speak with Science Fiction Weekly about the making of the sequel, which opens Aug. 29.
Can you tell us about your characters?
Delfino: I'm Rhonda Truitt. I play sort of a hard-ass cheerleader who spears the Creeper.
You're the javelin thrower?
Delfino: I'm the javelin thrower. Sort of like the Buffy of the group.
Aycox: I'm Minxie Hayes. I play the clairvoyant psychic cheerleader.
Every movie has one of those.
Aycox: Yeah, they're very, very common. Clairvoyant, psychic, blond cheerleaders. Basically, I have an interlock with the Creeper and kind of know through my dreams what's going on and putting pieces together to try to warn everyone.
Caldwell: Chelsea. What's my last name? Farmer. I'm the wussy spaz cheerleader.
Nenninger: We're all high-school basketball players on the team. I hate saying it, but I'm like the asshole of the movie. The sarcastic, like, counteracting one to everything that goes on. Just a prick, you know what I mean? I think the movie's set up so that you've got, like, all these kids who get into a horror situation, and then you watch how each one does it. I'm the bad guy, basically. Except for the Creeper. I'm the one that tells everyone their idea's dumb. The antagonist, if it's not the Creeper, would be me.
Hammond: Hell, I'm probably like the guy who thinks he's all cool. But then whenever we start getting attacked by the Creeper, I just turn into a big wuss. You can't see it because it's below the seats, but I did wet myself on several, several scenes.
Butcher: Kimball, he's Double D's [Garikayi Mutambirwa] best friend. And he's basically the power behind the throne. In my eyes he is. And he speaks softly, carries a big stick. I don't know. I think Kimball is one of the few people that actually wants everyone to survive. People start looking out for themselves, but Kimball wants everyone [to live], even Braddock, even though Braddock's a dick, because they've all been friends for a while.
Nicki, what are your character's visions about?
Aycox: She goes into her dreams, and she sees lots of battle zones and war zones from the Creeper from years and years before. When she sees Justin [Long, the actor from the first movie, who has a cameo], and she sees the other little boy, they're trying to warn her that the Creeper is in the cornfield.
And Marieh, your character is like Buffy?
Delfino: Yeah. She's very tough. Throughout the whole movie she's having this conflict with Eric, the Scotty Braddock character.
Aycox: She's tougher than Buffy, though.
Delfino: She's tougher than Buffy. Yeah. She is not afraid to put him in his place. And he's kind of like real smart-mouthed. Doesn't treat the rest of the team very well. And she lets him know who's boss. And I think that she still believes in him to a certain degree, and is still in love with him, and she's really disappointed when he pretty much wants to have it every man for himself. And sell everyone out in the bus. And I think she has a lot of vulnerability too. I try to bring that to the role. Because she's young, she's 16, and she is in a relationship where she's not being treated properly, even if she does put him in his place.
There's a big scene where you all have to run across a field while the Creeper's attacking you from the air.
Nenninger: That was a fun night.
Hammond: And it was four in the morning.
Nenninger: Uneven ground, like the most uneven, steer sh-t and gopher holes.
Did you take a header in that?
Butcher: I wasn't supposed to.
Nenniger: This was Kasan falling, not Kimball.
Butcher: Yeah, I ate a whole lot of dirt. I was surprised I was actually hungry for lunch. It was bad.
Cardwell: [We ran] over and over and over. The wardrobe lady gave me three choices of shoes. And she said, "Pick the one that is the most comfortable." I'm like, "Oh, let me get the little Pumas that match my shirt. They're sneakers. What sneakers aren't comfortable?" Oh my God. I cursed my decision on that day.
Delfino: I actually stopped, dropped and rolled. I saw the playback of the first take, you just see me running, and all of a sudden you just see hair, and then I'm out of the shot. ... I kept on rolling. That was it for me. I was down. My stunt doubles kept falling, too, by mistake. It was really difficult.
Cardwell: And the cow patties. My God, the cow patties. I've twisted my foot so many times on cow patties.
The guys were saying you kept overtaking them.
Delfino: They were not happy about that. Egos were hurt.
Cardwell: I do remember it. Because Eric told me every time he saw me behind him, he'd say, "Oh, no. I'm not getting beat by a girl," and try to take off some more.
The first movie challenged gender roles. Is there some of that in this movie?
Aycox: We're all very strong. ... I choose to be very upset [about the visions] and to have emotion in what I'm saying, because it is such a horrible circumstance. But in the same reality, I also fight very hard with Braddock. I say, "You listen to me. This is what I know." ... And I think that I've really chosen to bring a strong and emotional character to the film. I just think it's more interesting than being a typical sort of blond cheerleader that doesn't have any strength. That's not true. The girls in high school have a lot of strength.
Were you guys fans of the first movie?
Nenninger: I was. ... The Creeper doesn't necessarily scare me, but I like all the special effects and stuff. But just like the emotion that the actors had, the fear that they showed, that's what I liked, and that's what made me scared.
Hammond: It's got style to it. [Victor] does something with it that he wants to do. It's not like a clear, clean, regular picture. It kind of has like, it sounds clichéd, but like an independent feel to it. ... Victor likes to tell a story around the horror movie stuff, rather than just the big attacks or the big scares. ... That is great for the actors.
Cardwell: He has a way of extracting the juice from a scene ... just getting as much as you can out of this one moment. He's done that so many times. And each time you never get tired of it. ... It's the pregnant moments. It's the unsaid dialogue, which is important to the movie as well as speaking to each other. ...
Marieh, you hit the Creeper with a javelin?
Delfino: I stab him through the head. Through the eye, yeah. I stab him through the eye, half of his head comes [off]. I stab him twice. I actually like pull it out and then stab it back in.
Were you actually stabbing something?
Delfino: No. I was just stabbing the air. One of the scenes I stab, and somebody up there grabs it. So you can imagine I'm always afraid I'm going to stab this guy through the hand or something. And it's really funny that I got this part, because I'm not the most athletic. And suddenly I'm running with a javelin, stabbing it through the air. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. I watched the playback, I was really happy with it, I didn't hurt anyone, didn't break the camera.
Did you have any sequences with the stunt Creeper?
Aycox: We had some scenes with him. Some on the bus when he flew into the side, or when he hung upside down. Actually, he hung upside down one day from the bus, and they had lifted him before they were going to shoot the scene. So I decided, I wonder if I can scare the Creeper since he doesn't know I'm back here. So I tiptoed over, and the window was open, I stuck my head out, and I go, "Ah!" And he just looks at me. And I said, "I got you, didn't I?" And he's, like, just laughing, but he's very funny. I just wanted to know, could he get scared too? And yes, he can. A little blond girl can scare the Creeper. I just remember him smiling really big too, but he had those teeth in and I thought, "Wow, he is ugly."
This was the main Creeper actor, Jonathan Breck?
Aycox: No, no. This was the stunt guy.
Cardwell: Yeah, we didn't work at all with the main Creeper, huh?
Aycox: The very first day I was on set ... I just forgot I was doing a horror flick and who he was, and I had my back to him, and then I turned around, and right then I [gasp] just for a second, and I was like, "Oh yeah, I forgot where I was." Because he was really scary-looking.
Delfino: It's weird to see him walking around, because you've been building this whole story in your head about the Creeper, and then suddenly the guy's just walking around, like, eating a Twinkie.
Eric, can you talk about the sequence where you get the dagger in your arm, which pins you to a tree trunk?
Nenninger: Five a.m. Of course, I'd been up all night. They made a cast of my arm that was like a broken bone cast. They cut the half of [the knife] off, put a half knife in it, welded that to the tree so that my arm was in the cast, and then they had the half knife coming out of a jacket, which was very good, because I could yank as much as I wanted and it wouldn't come out at all. It was a real cool shot. You know the old horror movie where you see the guy's face, and you don't know what happens, and then it comes around? ... And I just started flailing and yelling like you guys saw, as much as I could.
Does Victor do anything to scare you?
Hammond: Only one time, when they told us that we weren't going to get lunch unless we looked scared.
What was the hardest part of the shoot?
Butcher: Staying awake.
Nenninger: Night shoots are really weird, because you go to work when it's light and you leave when it's light. So it's like the night never happened. And the days weren't passing. So you get really disoriented.
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