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Nicole, a
teenage girl, has decided to run away from
home together with her boyfriend, Jess, to pursue her
acting career in Los Angeles. It all seems like a great
idea until they pull into a rest stop for a break.
Nicole soon finds herself abandoned at the rest stop,
with no sign of her boyfriend. Things quickly go from
bad to worse when a demented serial killer shows up
in a yellow pick-up truck and starts playing a game of
cat and mouse with Nicole.
Have you ever sat through a movie which had so much
potential that you're really disappointed when it turns
out to be relatively mediocre? This is the case with
Rest Stop. What starts out as a great and suspenseful
horror flick in true survival style ended up leaving
me confused, annoyed and frustrated. Let me start from
the beginning.
Rest Stop tells the story of Nicole, a teenage girl
who has just ran away from home together with her
boyfriend to pursue her acting career in Los Angeles.
After pulling into a rest stop, Nicole soon finds
herself completely abandoned... well, perhaps not
completely abandoned. Our serial killer quickly shows
up (this movie does not waste any time before it gets
going) and we're in for a very suspenseful cat and
mouse game between the killer and Nicole. Unfortunately,
the game seems to go on for forever and after a while
it becomes both repetitive and dull. To make things
worse, someone thought it was a good idea to cast
Joey Lawrence in an unnecessarily long cameo appearance,
and he alone draws the movie down a lot.
Anyway, when he's finally out of the picture, the cat
and mouse game continues until the very confusing end.
And I have to be honest with you, until the very last
five minutes of this movie, I still considered giving
this a rating of four instead of three, but there is
no excuse for how they handled the ending. It makes
no sense at all, it doesn't even bother trying to explain
the events of the movie and it left me with a feeling
that I had just wasted 90 minutes of my life - which
is never a good thing. The movie builds up a couple of
very intriguing questions, only to completely dismiss
them and ignore answering them.
On a more positive note, Jaimie Alexander, playing Nicole,
gives us an outstanding performance and more or less
carries this movie. Had it not been for her, this
movie could have ended up being quite the mess. You
immediately root for her character and she reacts the
way that I think that most people would've reacted
under the same circumstances. The movie also looks much
better than it should considering that it's DTV. This
is something I could picture myself seeing at the cinema
and I can't wait to see what Raw Feed has in store for
us next. If more DTV horror flicks looked like this one,
I'd probably rent them all.
Ultimately, Rest Stop is a great movie for most of the
time and had it answered all the questions and left
Joey Lawrence out of the picture, I would probably have
ended up loving it. But the fact is, the ending was
inexcusable and I hated the way they dismissed all the
questions and this was the movie's main downfall. I'd
say watch the movie, but skip the final five minutes
and try to come up with your own answers to the movie.
Gorier than your average horror flick but I see no
need for an unrated version as it's not THAT gory. We
get a finger chewed off, some drilling action, blood
vomiting, a tongue cut off, brains splattered all over
the floor and some more.
The movie shined in the soundtrack department and I loved
the hillbilly version of "Amazing Grace" as well as
the slow rock music. It was all in harmony with the
movie and the suspense score was very effective.
Rest Stop is a great movie for most of the time and
it's unfortunate that it ended up the way it did. If
you're into survival horror, I can strongly recommend
Rest Stop, but do not watch the final five minutes of
the movie as you will end up feeling cheated.
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