10 Scary Movies More Frightening Than A Rest Stop Bathroom

Splinter is a film that is being discovered by fans more and more. A couple, Seth Belzer (Paulo Costanzo) and Polly Watt (Jill Wagner) make their first mistake when they go camping. Then they are carjacked by a couple, Dennis Farell (Shea Wigham) and Lacey Belisle (Rachel Kerbs), criminals on the run. They all end up at an abandoned gas station, the center of an attack from a fungus that infects people and animals with splinters. Once a body is infected, it dies, re-animates, and is ready to attack. The creatures are drawn by body heat, so Dennis and Polly are forced to hide in the gas station's food and beverage freezer. Fangoria has a review of Splinter from the Gingold Files.

Scott Spiegel directed Intruder, and this slasher horror comedy is set in a small local supermarket where the employees on the night shift find out that the owners will close the store and sell it. This sets off a series of slasher killings where an unknown killer stalks the final girl and cashier Jennifer Ross (Elizabeth Cox). Craig Peterson, Jennifer's ex-boyfriend, tries to save Jennifer. The film has several cameos from Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel, actors Ted Raimi and Bruce Campbell, and effects artist and director Greg Nicotero. It's one of those underappreciated gems.

Alien Raiders was director Ben Rock's first feature, produced by Daniel Myrick (The Blair Witch Project), and is described as The Thing in a grocery store. It stars Carlos Bernard as Aaron Ritter, Mathew St. Patrick as Seth Steadman, Rockmond Dunbar as Kane, and Courtney Ford as Sterling. The film was only released on video but is a cult classic horror movie favorite among fans. The creature effects and acting are a cut above most video-only releases.

You might think that you are safe from a shark in a supermarket in Australia, but happily, in Bait 3D, you are mistaken. Okay, maybe it is not so happy for the people in the movie. The movie takes the opportunity presented by flooding after a tsunami as a possibility that a 12-foot great white could menace shoppers in a grocery store. Directed by Kimble Rendall and co-written by Russell Mulcahey, the movie stars Xavier Samuel and Sharni Vinson. Sharni Vinson is the super tough and amazing survivalist final girl from You're Next.

Open 24 Hours is about a woman, Mary (Vanessa Grasse), whose boyfriend is a serial killer that she set on fire. Mary has paranoid delusions and can only get a job at a 24-hour gas station, and she has to have a job as a condition of her parole. Because of her delusions, it is hard for Mary to know what is real, and she starts to suspect that her boyfriend is there and killing people. Is that the truth? You have to watch to find out.

In this quirky horror movie written and directed by Stephen King, based on his short story Trucks, the cataclysm begins, horror is all around, and all the characters eventually end up at the truck stop. After Earth passes through the tail of a comet, all of the machines on Earth go berserk and start killing people. Bill Robinson (Emilio Estevez) and the truck stop's owner Bubba Hendershot (Pat Hingle), plan to escape once they get a Morse code message from the trucks who demand that the survivors in the truck stop pump gas for them. Critical reception was not good, but this film is lots of cheese-filled fun. The Kingcast has a podcast episode with Daniel Danger dedicated to Maximum Overdrive.

Frank Darabont's film of the Stephen King novella, The Mist, is one of the best-loved films on this list. While the reception of the wrenchingly tragic ending was mixed, it is undoubtedly a classic of grocery store horror. With Lovecraftian horrors roaming outside in the mist and a frightening zealot who wants to sacrifice people to save herself indoors, the film is a masterful success of slowly mounting dread. It stars Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, William Sadler, and Jeffrey DeMunn.

Rest Stop stars Jaimie Alexander as Nicole Carrow, a woman who chooses the wrong rest stop to use the bathroom. Her boyfriend Jess (Joey Mendicino) disappears, and Nicole is left alone to try and figure out what happened. A serial killer has abducted Jess, and Nicole has to fight to survive and find her boyfriend before it is too late. John Shiban directs the film, which also stars Joey Lawrence as Officer Michael Deacon and was released directly to the video.

The Crazies is a remake of George Romero's lesser-known classic film. Breck Eisner directed the film and actually managed to live up to the Romero original. The remake follows the first film's story pretty faithfully up to a point and then gets even meaner and more gory. The final confrontation with the infected happens when the survivors, David Dutton (Tim Olyphant) and Judy Dutton (Radha Mitchell), the sheriff and doctor of the town infected with the biological weapon Trixie, arrive at a seemingly deserted truck stop.

Speaking of cult classic movies, Messiah of Evil is an excellent example of one. Creepy and languid, there is only one scene set in a grocery store, but wow, is it great. When a woman Laura (Anitra Ford), goes to the local Ralphs supermarket at night, which is an unwise decision in a town filled with vampires, she is attacked by a crowd of hungry townspeople. Laura finds the people in the butcher shop area of the store eating raw meat. Unsettling. They pursue her, and she cannot leave the store. You can probably guess what happens, but the film's mysterious 70s vibe only enhances the monstrous evil in the set piece. Also, they set it in a Ralphs, which is low-key hilarious to anyone who lives in California and likes to shop late at night. Messiah of Evil is also included on our list of horror movies with ambiguous endings.