Rest Stop

"Rest Stop" is a horror movie which has to do about a maniac serial killer who torture and finally kills his victims on a rest stop where many of them stop.

The only thing that this movie makes us believe or convey is that everyone have their own and personal demon and have to overcome and beat it.

Although "Rest Stop" had some good moments but there were not many and did not make difference for the rest of this movie and did not make it any better.

The worst thing of it, is that it has a sequel.

I've never made one of these before, but this movie was literally so bad I had to say something about it.

I'm all for independent film-making as the past year has seen of the worst (in my opinion) of Hollywood's showings, the mainstream just seems to have lost touch with what making good films is all about. That being said movies like this really give independent film a bad reputation.

The characters are boring and too stupid to empathize with. The direction is horrible, the plotting is horrible, the plot itself is horrible, stay away, far away. Only one brief scene featuring a female's nude breasts, and even that wasn't worth a second look.

The scariest thing about this movie is the idea of ever having to watch it again. I gave it a 2 and not a 1 simply because the actors were visible and the sound was audible - it earns one point for each of those traits.

I do not write reviews here often but I can not stand by and let other people suffer through this movie without a least trying to warn them. This movie is horrible and it is not because "I do not know what the director was trying to convey" or "I am too stupid to understand the plot"; this movie is horrible because of poor direction, screen writing and acting. This is the "trifecta" of bad move making and the reason the film was direct to video. It tries to be something like "High Tension", "Hostel" and "TCSM" with the lifting of some of those ideas but it just does not work. I did not have high expectations or even medium ones going into the film but was still very disappointed. It had potential to be very good with a nice setting and good idea for a film but it was wasted.

Young couple on the road, minding their own business and having casual sex in their car during broad daylight. Yet, suddenly, they're being menaced and terrorized by a deranged psychopath in an old and rusty pick-up truck. Hmm, where have I seen this premise before? Oh yeah, now I remember, we've seen this a THOUSAND times before already, and approximately nine hundred and ninety-nine of the other cases were much better than "Rest Stop"! This weak and pitiable new movie is insulting even to the intellect of the most undemanding horror fans, as it doesn't feature a single original twist or memorable gimmick. It's very sadistic and nasty, but every teenkill-slasher flick is sadistic and nasty nowadays, so that's no real surprise anymore, neither. The absolute main problem with this production is the incredibly large amount of dumb plot holes and meaningless sub plots. Writer/director John Shiban damn well realized that the ultra-thin basic storyline nearly wasn't enough to fill a whole movie with, and thus he stuffs up his film like a Thanksgiving turkey with imbecile and nonsensical padding material. Nicole's boyfriend vanishes at an abandoned and filthy rest stop in California. Killing off her character right away wouldn't result in a very long movie and thus she subsequently encounters a motor home family of freaks, suffers from visions (?) in which she talks to the deranged killer's previous victims and she has deeply emotional (and boring) conversations with a police officer who just won't die even though a truck ran over him...twice! The dumb sub plots never lead anywhere and they're definitely the most pathetic and desperate attempts to stretch a movie's length I've ever seen. Instead of all the pointless padding, Shiban should have paid more attention to building up tension and make his lead characters a little more likable. Jaimie Alexander's character Nicole is an annoying and brainless girl, and you won't really care whether she'll survive the ordeal or not. Her boyfriend Jesse as well as the cop are both whining losers and their brutal deaths still weren't painful enough, if you ask me. I counted exactly three sequences, all including torture and gratuitous mutilation, that were gory and exciting enough to bring a sadist smile on my face. That's still way too few for a nowadays horror movie. Basically, "Rest Stop" is simply a miserable attempt to cash in on the success of such films like "Wolf Creek" and "Hostel", but you're better off watching the originals. This was the first film of the new production company called 'Raw Feed'. They're promoting themselves as the new name in great horror, but they'll have to come up with something much better than "Rest Stop" if they want us to believe that.

As some reviewers have said, the supernatural (ghost) elements could explain what some have called the "plot holes" in the story line and/or character motivation. Another possibility is that the events as we see them are part of a nightmare world or dream imagery in which actual events are "relived" in a surreal, disjointed sequence in which memories can be magnified and distorted. Both types of experience are not a precise replay of reality, though they have a basis in a reality. Another possibility is that the film-makers' goal is a depiction of their conception of what Purgatory could be like, in which the "sinner" relives portions of his/her life as an end to eventual redemption; a part of that redemption could include a reaching out (into the real world) in an effort to protect others from a similar fate by reaching out (or "across" time and space)to make contact with living people -- some of whom (as in the movie) can "see" and react, while others cannot.

How well this works in the eyes of an audience is another matter, of course. As with all movies, a willing suspension of disbelief is necessary for the degree of enjoyment one derives, and that is effected by (though not always satisfactorily controlled by)the acting, direction, special effects, etc. In the case of REST STOP (I haven't seen the sequel), the success of such an intention is for me only about 50/50, though I appreciate the multiple levels of possible meaning. Certainly it is not "the worst" movie of all time -- unless one has seen only one movie.