Rest Stop

Rating R Formats DVD Genre horror Starring Jaimie Alexander, Joey Mendicino, Nick Orefice, Deanna Russo, Joseph Lawrence Directed by John Shiban Publisher Warner Home Video External Links Official Warner Bros Website

Distributed by Warner Home Video and produced by a new genre label, Raw Feed, a former television writer/producer, John Shiban's directorial debut into the feature world brings this direct-to-disc title with a clever tagline, "Too much for theaters, only on DVD."

Like so many before it, this film has elements of similarity from other horror titles. Missing person concept is close to that of classic The Vanishing, an unseen serial killer driving a truck was seen in High Tension and Venom, and being at a wrong place at the wrong time on a road trip reminded me of my colleague Rob Schmidt's Wrong Turn.

The story starts with Nicole (Jaime Alexander) and Jess (Joey Mendicino) driving from Texas to Hollywood with dreams of becoming actors. But after using the girl's room at an isolated rest stop, Nicole finds out Jess has gone missing, and when the serial killer in yellow Ford truck comes around to torment her, she gets an unexpected help from a motorcycle cop Deacon, played by unrecognizable Joey Lawrence. But Deacon gets run over by the psycho killer and Nicole becomes even more desperate for her survival. In the end, she becomes a statistic as one of the missing persons on the bulletin board at the rest stop.

The plot, however, does have many frustrating holes typically found in horror genre. Frustrating holes, meaning there are too many obvious and right choices the characters didn't make, it almost insults today's sophisticated viewers.

The most bothersome example is the scene where the cop shows up and a distraught Nicole pleads to him that killer drives around in a Ford truck with yellow stripes Guess who just happens to pull up? The yellow truck pulls up with killer behind the wheel and the cop casually goes to talk to him, and ready? He lets him go! Nicole comes out to talk to the cop as we hear and see the truck turn around, soon running over the cop. At this point, any normal person will grab the cop's radio to call for help or take his gun and shoot the killer, but no, Nicole holds onto him and watches the killer come out of his truck and ties a chain to cop's motorcycle, yanking it out on the road. Why didn't the killer just kill 'em right there and then? I have no idea.

In special feature section's 3 horrific alternate endings, the first one makes the most sense because it gives the movie a closure. Shocking crime scene photos has some bloody, but not really shocking stills of serial killer's torture chamber. Scotty's family album is a short film about the creepy family that travels in a RV in the movie. Interesting family consists of religious fanatic father, mental-case mother, mute twin boys and a deformed midget baby, Scotty.