Jason McGuire, who played Drew Gilbert, was very shy and timid to be starring in a motion picture since he only had done elementary school plays and never had any other acting experience. But when he met fourteen-year-old Edward Furlong, who plays Jeff Matthews and starred in Terminator 2, Edward immediately became his best friend and mentor.
Mary Lambert has stated that her original concept for the film would have involved Ellie Creed as the central character, the only survivor from the first film. However, Paramount was not confident in making the film's lead a teenage girl, so the story was written with completely new characters and a male protagonist. Thirteen-year-old Furlong was cast in the lead role, capitalizing on his rise to fame in the previous year's blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
The monster arm prop used on the movie set at the beginning of the film is actually the arm of the skeleton on the pond in Stephen Kings Es (1990)
When production started in January 1992, the director Mary Lambert was set to filming in Maine, like the first one. However, the producers switched production to Georgia because they were wary of Maine's winter weather around that time. Plus Georgia's foliage was similar to Maine.