Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on October 6, 2006, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
By now, there have been enough movies about a guy/girl/couple being stalked across a rural landscape by a vehicle-driving villain that they’ve come to comprise a subgenre of their own. The long road traveled by Duel, The Hitcher, Jeepers Creepers et al. has now led to Rest Stop, the inauspicious debut feature in Warner Home Video’s Raw Feed line of direct-to-DVD horror features (streeting in a couple of weeks, but debuting first on the Sci Fi Channel). Written and directed by X Files/Supernatural veteran John Shiban, it blends elements of the aforementioned films and other similar titles into a bland stew that lacks sufficient original elements to set itself apart and isn’t clever enough to qualify as a conscious homage.
The basic premise is certainly serviceable: Sneaking out of her Texas home, rebellious young Nicole (Jaimie Alexander) takes off with her boyfriend Jess (Joey Mendicino) on a road trip to California. Like all characters in films of this type, they eschew the major highways in favor of a lonely back road where they pull into the titular location so Nicole can take a potty break. When she emerges, Jess has disappeared and there’s no one around to help her—but there is an unstoppable, malevolent Driver, barely seen behind the wheel of his yellow pickup truck, on hand to terrorize her.
While the movie is professionally crafted (and looks and sounds fine in the disc’s gritty and colorful 1.85:1 transfer, with sharp and detailed Dolby Digital 5.1 audio), Nicole’s plight lacks either the variety to make it stand out in its particular field or the plausibility to get under-the-skin frightening. The location is a well-chosen, easily identifiable one on which to build a relatable scare story, but any hint of reality goes out the window when Nicole attempts to solicit help from an over-the-top-wacko religious family with a weird, deformed adult-child. Things completely collapse with the arrival of Deacon (Joey Lawrence), a cop who typically proves less than helpful—even before he’s run down by the Driver’s truck, at what appears to be only about 20 mph. Nicole drags Deacon and his shattered legs into the rest stop bathroom, the Driver continues to torment them from outside and the situation becomes more eye-rollingly inane with each new development—but you may be distracted throughout the entire protracted setpiece as you simply wonder why Nicole doesn’t just grab Deacon’s gun and shoot the villain already!
There are hints, through sporadic appearances by what may be the ghost of one of the Driver’s previous victims, that Shiban is aiming toward a resolution that will subvert what has gone before and add a new psychological/supernatural dimension to the goings-on—but no such luck. Like the Bible-belting brood, these interludes are just distractions from the generic main storyline, and while the unrated version certainly ladles on the blood (with efficiently nasty makeup FX by Jamie Kelman), the fright elements are piled on by rote. The impression Rest Stop ultimately leaves the viewer with is one of imitation without passion.
Considering that Rest Stop is the flagship release in a high-profile disc franchise, the supplemental package is disappointingly skimpy. There’s a trio of alternate endings, none of which are significant improvements on the one actually used, and an extended look inside the bus where the Driver tortures his victims, which provides extra goodies for gorehounds without shedding much additional light on the killer’s background or motivation (which remain intentionally oblique throughout the movie itself). The disc’s minor highlight is Scotty’s Blog Exposé, consisting of photos and home movies ostensibly shot by that wacko family, and documenting a series of warped activities with a bracing sense of black humor that the grindingly straight-faced feature really could have used.
