Road Train

Australian genre films are rare, and good ones are even rarer. Unfortunately this isn't one of the good ones.

Flat, uninspired characters populate this Duel/Jeepers Creepers/Maximum Overdrive/Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Wolf Creek rip-off. Not one of the characters is interesting or well acted enough to inspire anything but annoyance from the audience. The script is a failure in all departments.

The whole film is just... off, from direction to editing, to acting and writing. Sure, it's clear they had a low budget... but it's also clear they had enough of a budget to make a good movie. There were some interesting ideas there with the truck and whatever the whole story was behind it, but it was all undercooked and fulfilled the small amount of potential it presented.

There's a definite underlying psycho-sexual theme in there too, replete with phallic and yonic imagery. Too bad the film isn't good enough to earn a thorough analysis of the stuff going on underneath the surface.

With such a small selection of genre films emerging from Australia these days, one tends to pin their hopes on any new entry that trundles along the beaten path. It's sad that out of all the scripts out there, this is the one that got made.

The teenagers Marcus (Xavier Samuel), Liz (Georgina Haig), Craig (Bob Morley) and Nina (Sophie Lowe) are camping in the remote outback of Australia. While driving on the road, a road train crashes on their car that leaves the road in a serious accident. The quartet survives and Craig breaks his arm, but their car is totally wrecked. However they see the train truck parked on road and Marcus and Liz walks to the vehicle to ask for help. They do not find the driver and sooner Craig and Nina arrive. When they see the driver shooting them, they decide to carjack the road train. Sooner they begin to act strange possessed by some evil force.

"Road Train" is a gruesome supernatural journey to hell of four teenagers. The story and the screenplay have many flaws, and there is no explanation why the two couples are camping together in a desert area if they have problems of relationship and grief with the betrayal of one of the girls. The beginning has a free exploitation of sex with an unnecessary scene. The characters are unlikable and it is impossible to feel empathy for any of them. The screams of the girls are unbearable. Marcus drinking urine is nasty and also unnecessary. There is no explanation for the three hound dogs on the hood of the train truck. What does Liz drink in the can? For foreigners like me, the term road train is mostly used in Australia and means a line of linked trailers pulled by a truck, used for transporting stock in remote areas of Argentina, Australia, Mexico, the United States and Canada. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Terror Sobre Rodas" ("Terror Over Wheels")

Note: On 20 November 2020, I saw this film again.

Sigh … Will I ever learn to stop renting horror movies solely based on their appealing DVD covers? I guess not … Here in my country "Road Train" got released in a blood red DVD box, with an illustration of the titular truck on the cover and a human skull processed into it. It's a lot grimmer than the Frightfest cover depicted here on the website, for sure. But anyway, the neat cover about concludes the positive things I have to share about this weak and pathetic attempt at making an Australian outback exploitation movie. "Road Train" easily could have been a terrific and straightforwardly frightening horror gem, somewhat of a crossover between the almighty "Duel" and "Wolf Creek", but instead director Dean Francis thought it would be cooler to do a pretentious and totally incoherent thriller with supernatural elements and complex character intrigues. Two couples on a camping trip in the Aussie outback are brutally rammed off the road by a gigantic truck and are forced to leave all their belongings behind in the car wreck. When they approach the truck, it's empty, but they are targeted by a gunman from a distance. They climb aboard the truck and intend to drive to the nearest community, but the imposing truck seemingly has a mind of its own and brings them far off-road to the middle of outback-nowhere. The first and perhaps most vital issue already starts with the introduction of the characters. They are two young couples that struggled with romantic betrayal and backstabbing in recent history, so it's absolutely utmost implausible that they would still embark on a camping holiday together! On top of being stupid and unreliable, they're also incredibly hateful and irritable people; every single one of them. It's never a good sign when in a horror movie you shamelessly hope for every character to die a horrible and gruesome death. The rest of the screenplay is a complete mess! The characters suffer from horrid hallucinations and descent into madness, yet few moments later they act totally normal and rational again. The hallucination sequences are thoroughly unelaborated (what do the red-eyes wolves signify, for example?) and most illogical. I can imagine that the heat and desolation of the Australian outback inflicts mental deterioration, but surely not after only a couple of hours? And if it's all caused by the truck itself, how and why? The massive road train looks impressive and effectively menacing, and the eventual revelation of what goes on inside the cargo containers is definitely morbid, but there isn't any background provided whatsoever. With the exception of one or two notable sequences, "Road Train" is also very disappointing in the blood & gore department. All the above and adding lousy acting performances, too many tedious parts and amateurish dialogs, leads to one of the most imbecilic horror flicks of the past years. If you ever come across a copy, I would strongly advise to give it a pass. Unless of course if you can't resist the enticing DVD cover art, which is something I can fully relate to.

This movie has 22% of its votes giving it 10/10 stars. Every single one of these votes is, without a doubt from someone working for this movie in some capacity. This was one of the worst films ever made easily. The acting was the worst I've ever seen by far, it often seemed like a bad joke at times, characters becoming angry and hysterical for absolutely no reason. Not much of anything actually happens to anyone in this movie, yet they all completely loose their marbles, WHY!? Anyway, IMDb.com, you really need to moderate your voting system. Terrible low budget pieces of crap like this shouldn't be able to earn more than a 2 or 3 stars without getting thousands of votes first.

irredeemable dross of the highest calibre.

cardboard cutout characters with zero personality fall prey to a decidedly un-menacing truck.

there are references to Cerberus and hell etc, but so flimsy and bewilderingly pointless is the narrative, score, acting and cinematography that you're just left wondering how this even got made.

who exactly sat down read the script and said, you know what, this sounds AWESOME.

it isn't even a good generic horror movie, it's the kind of film making that makes Eli Roth look like Kubrick

terrible.