Directed by John Shiban. Starring
Those of you who are baseball fans and watch it on TV are very familiar with the refrain, "a swing and a miss!" and that phrase aptly describes Rest Stop, an obvious attempt at making a good, thought provoking horror flick with the necessary gore to satisfy the bloodthirsty fans of the genre, but the film just plain misses, in my book.
The plot is simple and in tune with the primary formula of the horror genre: young people in distress in a remote, deserted location. Nicole (
Well, anyway, at some point prior to getting to the environs of
She enters a truly disgusting rest stop area bathroom-passing an outside bulletin board that is chalked full of more missing persons signs than anyone will see in a year- and goes in to do her thing. Now, I should say that we as the viewers have seen this rest stop latrine before, in the opening scenes a young woman dressed right out of the '70's goes in there and is assaulted by an unseen stranger who comes up to her bathroom stall door. No further information is given, but we know that it will hook up with the main plot again, somewhow.
Anyway, Nicole makes a choice that no other sane woman with any sense of hygiene would and uses the facilities there, noticing some cryptic things written on the stall door. Well, whatever...but things spice up a little when she leaves the bathroom and Jess and the vehicle is no where to be seen.
As you might guess, this is somewhat perturbing but not nearly so much as when the mysterious pickup truck later drives near Nicole and tosses Jess' bloody cell phone out the window. Now Nicole "thinks that something might have happened to Jess", the obviously understated phrase she uses when trying to call for help on the CB radio she finds in an abandoned office near the rest stop (in addition to a bottle of bourbon that she slams down while waiting for help...in addition to looking at a porno movie...I'm not kidding)
There is an RV which has been present and in plain view of the rest stop area since the beginning of Nicole's ordeal, and Nicole did go there, but no one answered, despite the clear sound and flash of a camera clicking away inside. Hmmm.
Now, Nicole's situation started off in broad daylight, but as time goes by, and it begins to get dark so she has a decision to make. Should she go to the highway and start walking, hoping to flag down a Good Samaritan or someone with a flippin' phone? Should she maybe give the folks in the RV another try? How about another shot on the CB to try to raise someone a little closer than two hundred miles away (which you might think she could do in the most populous state in the country)?
Nope! Its back to the bathroom for Nicole only this time she has company...in the form of a young woman trapped in a room behind a partially open door in the bathroom (again, I'm serious) who tells wild wooly tales of a man in a truck who has tortured her. Her name is Tracy (Deanna Russo) and, prior to regurgitating copious amounts of blood and showing Nicole her hands with several severed fingers, she does ask how long she (Tracy) has been there. Well, we know from the movie that Tracy, the girl from the opening scenes as well, was last seen in 1971 so she has been there a while...and aged well, which is to say not at all.
Now, I won't go blow by blow here, except to say Nicole will eventually run into the family in the RV, headed by a middle aged husband (Michael Childers) who spouts bible verses and a wife (Diane Salinger) who spouts profanities at Nicole. They have twin sons who seem to do everything in unison and another son who is a deformed dwarf that takes pictures constantly. O.k., they are creepy but only in the story for a few minutes and I can't tell you what they have to do with anything.
Nicole also finally meets up with a police officer who answered her initial call over the radio. Now, this officer (Joseph Lawrence), though clean cut and fairly cordial, is no Sherlock Holmes, folks. He actually goes up to the mysterious truck and gives the unseen tormentor directions after Nicole has told him that the truck driver is the bad guy. He probably regretted this a few minutes later when the truck runs him over while he is inexplicably standing in the middle of the road, shooting the breeze with Nicole.
Not to worry, he survives for a while, long enough to give some long winded and unnecessary dying speech about his family and imploring Nicole to shoot the bad guy....oh, and of course, Nicole drags him to the bathroom....
Listen, I think this movie was a legitimate effort at putting together an interesting story and, if you see this on DVD-the only place where you will probably ever be able to see it-its clearer what they were trying to do. The actors are saddled with a silly script and ridiculous dialogue at times. The best way to sum it up is that no one makes any sense. Its hard to empathize with our heroine when she does such stupid things. (When the trooper is laying in the middle of the road and the truck driver gets out of his truck to chain up the cop's motorcycle and drive off-coming within feet of Nicole and the prone cop-why not take the cop's gun and try to shoot him then instead of waiting to try this when they are barricaded in the bathroom?)
I know that good movies often don't explain everything, leaving it to us to try to figure it out (Silent Hill and Basic Instinct come to mind) but, we've got to have enough information to form a theory...for example, if the rest stop is a metaphor for hell or another dimension or whatever, how did-not to mention why-Nicole and Tracey get there? And at the end, are the throng of people milling around the now populated rest stop when we meet the next victim part of this supernatural thing? They don't seem to be. If it's not supernatural, how does the truck driver keep running over people and ramming into things with not even a dent in the truck? What happened to all of that blood Tracey puked up and where did the cop's body disappear to? Or is this just all in Nicole's mind? If the strange family was part of this, why did they let Nicole go? If they were not, what was the point? I don't know, too open ended for me.
Gore/torture scene lovers will find plenty here to cheer about, however. I don't mind those two things, but when they are up there with an absence of explanation or depth of character or plot, its just not as effective. Sort of like sex without love, you know? O.k., back on point: I'm not putting this in the dud category...barely, because there was a serious and professional attempt to entertain and be provacative, it just didn't work.
So, if you asked me, I wouldn't recommend Rest Stop.
Of course, I realize that you didn't ask me.
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