Rest Stop Review
This is the first film under the new Warner Bros. straight-to-DVD horror label Raw Feed, which will essentially release a new genre film each year. Rest Stop attempts to resurrect the killer-car sub-genre, which was made popular in the 70s and 80s, where whether it was the person behind the car or if it was the vehicle itself, there were people running (or driving) for their lives. The sub-genre pretty much died out in the 90s, with the exception of a couple films. Sadly, this film doesn’t offer much originality or even much sense for that matter. You might have caught the first airing of this movie on the Sci-Fi channel this past weekend, where I’m sure a lot of the gore-scenes were cut short. That’s too bad since gore (with what little amount it does have) is pretty much the only thing that’ll keep you watching.
The movie starts off interesting when a couple make a detour at a rest stop, only to be split up when the female returns from the facilities to discover her boyfriend is missing. To make matters worse she discovers that an ominous yellow truck has apparently been stalking them since a dubious encounter they had while on the road. It’s not long before a cat-and-mouse game is played with the young woman and the man behind the truck, whose seemingly trying to keep her at the rest stop for one reason or another, which just happens to be her only place of solace. This marks director John Shiban’s film debut, moving up as producer and director for various television series such as the X-Files and recently with WB’s (now CW) Supernatural. Rest Stop is definitely not a good film to debut with since it seemed to run out of ideas half-way through and given the fact it has 3 horrible alternate endings that it was clear not to even know when to stop.
There are a couple decent gore sequences and a nice scene involving someone getting their finger bitten off, but sadly there’s not much else going on aside from the girl holding up in the rest area. The killer was probably one of the most uninteresting villains I’ve seen in a while. Not only was the truck plain and boring, but the driver itself seemed more of a nuisance than someone to fear. From the first half it seems as though it’s just a slasher, while the second half begins to delve into supernatural lines (which isn’t unknown for John since he worked with the X-Files), which just ends up confusing the viewers. As the film progresses we’re thrown a few fairly pointless scenes involving a strange family of freaks (that have nothing to do with the story) and the appearance of Joey Lawrecence as a police officer, who you’ll learn makes a very long exit. By the end of the film you’re going to be left scratching your head at the horrible ending, which is still a sad improvement from the ridiculous alternate endings that were probably only filmed just to be put as an extra on the DVD.
While attempting to be different Rest Stop essentialy loses its identity by confusing itself as either a slasher or a supernatural flick. As the story progresses you’ll find that not much has changed from the point the girl discovered the yellow truck had been following her, and you’ll most likely find yourself hitting fast-forward in a lot of the slow-paced scenes involving the girl and the appearance of Joey Lawrence. Rent at your own risk.
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[...] The movie starts off interesting when a couple make a detour at a rest stop, only to be split up when the female returns from the facilities to discover her boyfriend is missing. To make matters worse she discovers that an ominous yellow truck has apparently been stalking them since a dubious encounter they had while on the road.6 [...]