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There were two serious problems with the first film: It had a wafer thin plot that felt made up as it went along, and it got sillier the more we saw the Creeper. Well, Salva starts where he left off, with the Creeper on screen in all his ludicrous glory, although Salva obviously thinks he's really terrifying (he isn't!). Where this film succeeds is in the interplay between the teens, trapped in the bus and playing a brutal game of Lifeboat to decide who lives and who dies. Everything else in the film is silly and underdeveloped. Where the first film had a convenient clairvoyant show up to explain what was happening, this one gives one of the cheerleaders (Aycox) a gift of second sight so she can relay all the illogical facts from the original film's Darry (Long). It wouldn't seem so lame if Salva had his tongue in his cheek. Despite some nicely humorous touches, he clearly takes this hideously seriously and thinks he's scaring the liver out of us. But he's not. There are a few jolts but nothing scary. We're laughing at him, not with him. Hopefully he'll figure this out before he starts working on Part 3. I can hear him now: "I always envisioned this as a trilogy!"