Aaliyah Birthday Tribute - Rest in Peace Aaliyah
Blood drips as a woman screams in pain, her flesh ripped by a power drill that digs deep into her muscles until it strikes the bone. This is the kind of gore and blood that has become a very common scene in modern day horror films, and was also included in the film, Rest Stop. I recently viewed this film, which, by reading the synopsis, I felt had some potential to be a good horror movie. I was let down by the movie, which continually dropped every potential ball it ever held.
I have been a fan of horror films for quite some time and have viewed many, some were the supernatural horror type, others suspense chillers and some the basic psychopath with toys kind. I just want to establish this to show I am giving this film a bad review not because I am offended or disgusted with horror/gore films; in fact I enjoyed and even own the first Saw film and found it very original and different, as well as enjoying other such films like the Hannibal trilogy. Before I go further, I will warn everyone I intend to include several spoilers throughout this review, because it will be hard for me to list all of my complaints about this movie without going into details. If you don't want to have the movie ruined please let me just give you this little bit of advice here. Remember that movie about the video that people watched and then they died? This movie is kind of like that because you watch it and immediately want to kill yourself after. That being said lets get to the movie.
Rest Stop has a semi-realistic setting that seemed fairly plausible when I first heard of movie. It centers on two young lovers Nicole (Jaimie Alexander) and Jess (Joey Mendincino) who are running away together to Los Angeles to try and start careers as actors. So far it seems plausible pretty much the same plot as 8 millimeter but it is something that does actually happen so I can see it being used more than once. The only real complaint I have so far is that Nicole looks to be easily in her mid-twenties if not older when she ‘runs away'. The first hint of things going badly is in the middle of a nude scene when we see a yellow truck stop and watch them have sex for a brief moment; this truck pops up again and again in the film despite being destroyed once and damaged others.
Soon the couple is lost in a remote area trying to find their way back to the main highway. Again, a little bit cliché but I figure that the horror movie industry has been around for a long time so there is bound to be some repetition. So, going on Nicole has to use the restroom, but decided she doesn't like the idea of going in the dirt, so they pull into an old rest stop (hence the title) and from there is when the trouble starts, both for the characters and for the audience. The stop is completely deserted save for one RV that is parked there and a locked ranger station. After walking into a disgusting bathroom that looks to be almost modeled after Saw's scenery, Nicole sits down and finds plenty of graffiti on the walls telling how KLZ 303 is chasing people and how much trouble others are in, how he is killing them, chasing them, etc. When she leaves the bathroom Nicole finds Jess and the car is gone and immediately assumes that he has ditched her, a fairly believable assumption considering the circumstances.
In the great horror tradition her cell phone is not working and no working payphone can be found, she does however find numerous ‘missing' posters dating back to the early seventies. The RV refuses to open its door to Nicole at this time, leaving her without any option for contacting the outside world. She decides also that she does not want to walk to the next service station because it is sixty miles away.
Then, out of the blue, the familiar yellow truck speeds by, almost hitting her and tossing Jess' bloody cell phone out at her, then leaving for the next few hours. Obviously she knows by now the man is going to hurt her and is obviously hurting Jess, but rather than flee the rest stop and walking the sixty miles to the next stop she decides to go sit down on the toilet again. Now, I know sixty miles is a long way, but compared to being brutally butchered by a psychopath, I'd hike it. The killer returns from time to time in the span of hours to torment and taunt poor Nicole who is stuck at the rest stop, purely by her own design I might add. Eventually she breaks into a rangers station located at the rest stop and faced with a psychotic killer does the only sensible thing, gets drunk on wild turkey and listens to the radio! She does do one smart thing, she gets on the rangers radio and calls for help. After a brief pause she is answered by what she is told is a truck driver who is away off but offers to call police for Nicole, now anyone who has seen many horror films can pretty much guess that the man on the CB is actually the killer and, of course, it is.
After the radio, Nicole looks out to see her car in the parking lot and rushes out to get in. Inside the car there is a good amount of blood on the seats and, of course, does not start. Soon after she gets in the psycho rams the car to scare her and then leaves. After the car incident, Nicole sees the RV driving off and opens the previously locked door. Inside she finds a relatively cliché family of ultra religious fanatics who say they “don't know nothing bout no yellow truck.” Obviously hinting that they are in some way related to the truck driver or know of him, since they were parked there the entire time the truck was ramming the car. When a camera flash goes off in the back, Nicole assumes it is her missing boyfriend and storms back to the back to find him, but finds only a handicapped and deformed boy.
From here the family chastises Nicole for her wicked way, calls her a whore, tells her she'll get she deserves and quotes verses from the bible about angels of wrath, before tossing her back to the rest stop where it all started and driving off. Now this family could have played a big role later, but we don't see anything of them at all save the RV at the end and a short clip after the credits, so another potential plotline dropped to the dust. Nicole's next move you ask? What anyone in her place would do…go back into the bathroom!!! There, locked in the broom closet, she finds another of the truck driver's victim's who identifies herself as Tracy Kess (Deanna Russo) the woman is bloody, battered and missing fingers. While talking to the woman, the driver returns and Nicole wedges a broken stall door against the main door of the bathroom to keep the killer out. The killer leaves and the victim begins vomiting blood. Nicole rushes to the battered car and retrieves a tire iron to help pry the woman out of the locked closet, but when she returns the body as well as the blood is gone. Alright, this may have been a ghost as Nicole later finds the name Tracy Kess on the missing poster dated 1971.
From this point a motorcycle cop pulls up, played by Joey Lawrence, the sad part is his acting was the high point of this painful film. As the cop arrives Nicole rushes to tell him of her story and as they are talking the truck returns. The police man talks to the man and comments about there are no dents on the truck since Nicole alleged he rammed her car. Now I think I can hear a car running and speeding up alright, and a highway patrol man trained to listen for cars should know the sound too, but no, Officer Michael stands right in the middle of the road nonchalantly as he is hit by the psycho killer, ‘Whoa!'.
Now, Nicole then runs over to the cop and tries to drag him away, the killer now backs over the officer's legs to further injure the man and then walks over to the officer's motorcycle slowly, nonchalantly and completely paying no attention to Nicole and the cop. This is the part where I began yelling at the movie because if some psychotic killer was meandering slowly by me and I had a gun right there I would have shot him! No, Nicole just sits there looking at him as he tows the cop's motorcycle, and then leaves for another few hours. Nicole drags the dying cop back to…the bathroom! I guess when your faced with a psychotic killer the best thing to do is to make sure your nice and cornered where he can find you over and over again. Again she does have the presence of mind to block the door so the killer can't get in but he one ups her this time and wires the door shut from outside so she is likewise stuck inside. Using the tire iron, Nicole manages to pry the handle off so she can reach out to unwire it, of course she gets grabbed by the killer and her index finger is bitten off…hope he had his shots.
Now at this point Nicole and the obviously brain-dead officer realize “hey, we've got a gun!” and she begins blasting at the door in hopes of getting the man, but of course misses. Next, the killer begins dumping gasoline into the restroom so he can burn them. After he finishes dumping the gas in he stands right outside the window in clear view, in clear 'shooting him' view and again, Nicole just stands there. The officer, who again displays no real intelligence, begs her to shoot him, rather than blasting the killer who's just outside the window. She does and manages to miss even though it is in Joey's mouth so she is forced to use her last bullet to kill him. I guess cops don't carry spare rounds anymore. Nicole manages to escape through a skylight and right before she leaves, she looks back and the cop's body is gone. Alright, the first missing body was a ghost, but what about the cop? If he was a ghost why did the psycho run him over? I guess they just couldn't afford to have an actor the caliber of Joey Lawrence on the set for too long and had to cut his body out.
Oh well, going on with this horrific story we see Nicole running away to escape, but rather than running a little way into the woods, you know where a truck can't go, she runs right down the middle of the road! Of course, with her master hiding skills the killer finds her and stops the truck and apparently gets out. Nicole manages to get the jump on him and beats him to death with her tire iron, but oh no, it is not him, but her boyfriend. Rather predictable but probably the only entertaining bit in the film. After this the driver leaves, again, and instead of using that time to run away Nicole heads back to the rest stop, again.
Nicole reenters the ranger station and grabs the bottle of Wild Turkey and uses it to collect some gas from her car that is leaking it. Then she takes her shirt off, showing that her breasts seem much smaller than they were in her nude scene meaning that the directors can't even get boobs right. Alright anyway she actually does something right and launches the Molotov cocktail at the truck, blowing it up. Now, despite the fact that we see the truck the entire time on camera and that Nicole is looking at the truck the whole time and we see no one escaping, he escapes! In the standard ending the man suddenly appears behind her and grabs her, though we still don't see his face. At the end we see a beautified version of the rest stop, jammed full of people, including the familiar RV, and see a young woman go to use the restroom. She is stopped by a ranger who talks about watching the wet paint inside because of a fire started by ‘drifters' and quotes the same as the strange religious family when saying he hopes they get what they deserve. So either he's in on it or just says stuff like that, it never tells, like most things in the film.
Inside the woman hears Nicole yelling for help and goes to get the ranger, who comes in and finds the closet empty, but as they leave we see Nicole leaning out calling for help and vomiting blood. Then after the credits we see a video clip of the father in the RV burying Jess' body, pretty much telling us their involved but not really how, why or when it all started. Ok, now onto the alternate pain, err, endings. First one is Nicole in a cab pulling up to her house, fully clothed (and healed) and going in to tell her parents she's home. As the cab pulls off, without being paid, the menacing yellow truck pulls up fully restored. I guess the guy works for Ford and gets them cheap. Now the second ending is…exactly the same, except the man walks up to the house and we finally get a clear shot of his face.
At first I figured that we didn't see much of the killer because it is another old horror cliché, fear of the unknown. I figured out the real reason why though, when we see his face looking in the window he does not look menacing, scarred and cut like some monster, he doesn't look stoic and chillingly calm either in fact he looks rather confused and befuddled as if he wasn't sure if this was the right house. So there we have the movie, my review is that it truly is just about the most horrific movie you might ever see. Though it is no where near as good as Saw, Hannibal or even as good as Wolf Creek this movie has one special feature, it will hurt all the way through and leaves you hurting for days and days after. If you're in the mood for some true horror, please skip this, but if you're in the mood to be confused, even maybe a little angry, please see it, watch it with friends so you can share the pain.
My rating for this film is going to be -5 stars. The acting was bad, plot was thin and every potentially scary, entertaining or even slightly good aspect was ignored and left behind as the directors changed direction in the film again and again and again. I am hoping to maybe make back what I paid for renting this horrible movie with this review but even if I don't it is worth it, to warn others of the evil of this film, because in my opinion you could hit yourself violently on the head with a hammer for twenty minutes and get more entertaining dreams in your resulting brain-damaged coma than you'd get from watching this film. (Note: writer does not advocate anyone hitting themselves with a hammer; this is only a comical analogy). I hope you've enjoyed this review and I hope even more that it will help you to avoid as painful experience as I had.
Rafael Schultz