The bad news is that Jeepers Creepers 2, opening in theatres today, doesn't live up to its incredible trailer.

The good news is that it still offers a lot of good scary fun.

The original Jeepers Creepers was a tried-and-true slasher movie with a villain fashioned from the same indestructible ghoul mould as Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street flicks or Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th infamy.

The Creeper is an ancient demon who regenerates himself by devouring the body parts of humans.

If the Creeper has an eye, arm, leg or heart that is failing or hacked off, he finds one he likes on a human and takes it.

This makes him simultaneously Frankenstein and the mad doctor's monster.

In Jeepers Creepers 2, the Creeper has morphed into a flesh-devouring giant bug or bat, so that this sequel plays much more like a good old-fashioned creature feature.

The Creeper is now much closer to the mutated insect in The Deadly Mantis or the gill man in The Creature from the Black Lagoon than he is to Jason or Freddy.

Legend says the Creeper lies dormant in his cocoon for 23 years, then emerges as a hideous bug to feed for 23 days.

When he sets his appetite on a particular human, nothing can stop him.

That is, until he crosses paths with Taggart (Ray Wise), a kindly, widowed farmer whose youngest son the Creeper steals from the man's cornfield.

Taggart vows to kill the creature at any cost, so he fashions a harpoon contraption that would have served Captain Ahab well in his battles with the voracious whale in Moby Dick.

Separating Taggart from the Creeper is a bus taking a college basketball team and its cheerleaders back from a championship game.

The Creeper sees the students as sardines in a can ripe for snacking.

When he attacks the bus, it's as scary as anything the dinosaurs did to their human prey in the Jurassic Park flicks, or the cat and spider to the miniaturized human in The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Victor Salva, who wrote and directed both Creeper films, knows how to build and sustain suspense.

There are scenes in Jeepers Creepers 2 that achieve nerve-racking intensity without having to resort to gore and excessive bloodletting.

The opening in the Taggart cornfield and several of the attacks on the bus achieve a level of tension not seen since The Ring.

Jeepers Creepers 2 is a film that is more terrifying for what might happen than for what actually does.

Salva also gets consistently strong performances from his youthful cast, but it's Wise and Jonathan Breck as the Creeper who steal the film.

Breck is memorable for his menacing posturing, and Wise for his truthful performance of a man that vengeance has transformed into a killing machine as single-minded and determined as his unearthly foe.

With his Jeepers Creepers flicks Salva proves modern filmmakers can make horror films that are genuinely scary without being silly or making fun of themselves.

Hopefully we haven't seen the last of the Creepers, because its brand of genuine terror is much too rare in horror flicks these days.

(This film is rated 18-A)

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