Rest Stop (DVD, 2006, Unrated Edition, Raw Feed Series)

This film, written by John Shiban, starts out with a young couple driving from Argyle Texas to California hoping to break into the acting scene. Nicole Carrow (Jamie Alexander) starts out by narrating how she has to go on this trip to find and chase away her demons. Nichole's boyfriend Jess Hilts (Joey Mendicino) stops along the road to have casual sex with her after getting high, but fails to take a pit stop.

They drive down an old road, and park at an abandoned rest stop. Nicole stupidly goes into the abandoned rest stop to use the toilet. Jess dissapears. We assume he is abducted by an unnamed driver of an old yellow truck (Nick Orefice). Throughout the night, Nicole is stalked by this sadistic maniac, while haunting things happen to her in the rest stop bathroom.

For all the talent that they have out there to make a memorable film, producers seem to be making more and more horror films these days than ever about torture. I'm really sorry to say, just because people can hold up a camera and get someone crazy to act, doesn't mean it's going to be a marvelous film that we will carry around with us for the rest of our lives.

Rest Stop has the single most aggravating thing in a horror film and that is two young teenagers who cuss, smoke, have sex, and supposedly fall in love. I'd think that for all the most of the film, if they would just, for once, start a film out with redeeming qualities, people like you and I wouldn't feel so good about rooting for them to "Get what they had coming to them" mentality".

The leading female characters in these films are always depicted as the spoiled brat who runs away from home with her boyfriend to get into more and more trouble. This is what we see here with Nicole Carrow. Writer Shiban fails to allow us to connect with her from the beginning, which makes us totally disconnected with anything she feels and screams about. Shiban brings us a another character we can supposedly relate to, a motorcycle cop Michael Deacon (played by Joseph Lawrence).

The freakiest thing about this film that becomes unclear and annoying, is that we don't really know whether Nicole is seeing ghosts or real people. When the character Tracy Kress (Deanna Russo) is supposedly discovered locked behind the utility door and then she disappears (as well as the 3 gallons of blood on the floor), that's when we really start wondering about the cohesiveness of this film.

The "RV camper on wheels family" was really the only really good thing about the sub-plots in this film. The family consists of retarded deformed Scotty (Mikey Post) who takes polaroid after polaroid of everything (which has to be quite expensive), the father (Michael Childers), the twins (Gary and Edmund Entin), and the mother (Diane Salinger). Even though we see them played as some kind of half-backed religious zealots, we struggle to piece them into the plot of this film. Perhaps (this is a long shot) the family is really like a ghost posse tries to help the people who wind up missing but are stuck in the mess, just like the KLZ-606 killer who is also really a ghost who possesses bad people that wind up killing and torturing and driving the yellow ghost truck again. Even the cop, who freakishly tells Nichole she missed after shooting him at point plank range must be a ghost. Are you getting the drift?

I'm going to give this film a 3/5 for incongruity. Hope the sequel is better somehow, but I highly doubt it. Good Luck about getting past the gore.

"DO NOT" be misled by poor reviews, anyone! Let me be the sole promoter of this film if I must!!!! -- To hate or dislike this film means you simply aren't watching the same film! -- REST STOP (Unrated Version) is packed with everything that makes a true shocker, a shocker. This movie has the feel of several classics all mixed into one culture-shocker you cannot afford to miss. Two star-crossed lovers are running away from home, making their carefree way across long-stretches of highway towards Hollywood (LA) where they dream of future lives as actors. Their dreams will become maddeningly derailed when they need to make a REST STOP at a quiet and seemingly reserved location just off the Interstate....on a road they can't seem to spot on the map. (Note: "Hills Have Eyes") -- Set perfectly across a small wooden bridge amidst a backdrop of quiets woods is a concrete bathroom, eerily reminiscent of the bathstops we are all familiar in seeing from our own trips to local swim-holes....(where everyone piles in to change their bathing suits or see the lifeguards sitting on top). You quickly think this bathroom is something so perfectly destined to be found just beyond the "Camp Crystal Lake" sign (Note: "Friday the 13th"). The real sell in this film is the astounding performance put forth by up-and-coming actress (Jamie Alexander), the girlfriend who uses the Rest Room only to return and find her boyfriend and the car completely gone, with no signs of him or the car ever even pulling up! (Note: "The Vanishing") - A rundown mobile home trailer is parked quietly at the stop and not another thing in sight. A photograph flash snaps from the rear of the trailer but no one answers as Alexander pounds the trailer in her fright. Alas, of course, to no avail. Hell has just opened. Literally. She has in fact, been photographed. And like others for decades upon decades, (you will learn as the tale of wickedly evil taunt will show), she has now become "A Chosen One". Selected for punishment for her sins by "The Angel of Wrath", "The Angel of Punishment", "The Angel of Destruction". -- She manages to get inside the trailer as it attempts to pull away, and she suddenly realizes she is with a family, so devious, so twisted and so evil that she manages to bail out quickly and return to the REST STOP. (Note: This short but unbelievably sinister ride is a cross between "The Shining", the way-too-close close up camera work of "The Evil Dead", and the straight-faced outright fathomless evil of the "Way Too Nice Couple" from the film "Running Scared" that took in the young boy. -- Alexander is now a hostage of the REST STOP. And absolutely nothing, it seems will save her from "The Reaper"....as a lone truck rides the highway, and into the REST STOP. -- (To tell you more would be to sell out what may very well have been the years biggest "Miss-Out", having not gotten into theaters). With incredible tension and horrifyingly realistic gripping and merciless evil, REST STOP carries the intensity of films like "High Tension", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "The Hills Have Eyes", "The Shining" and others. REST STOP is unrelenting, unforgiving and deviously evil to it's core. SEE THIS FILM and get your copy now....before this film reaches cult-status. And you can say you bought into it's torment in advance!

PLEASE SEE MY OTHER REVIEWS FOR GREAT FILMS !!!!

This film reminds me of the 70s slasher-slaughterhouse style, psychotically-dysfunctional family genre type of movies aka, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes. The movie is about an aspirant actress Nicole Carrow who runs away from home accompanied by her boyfriend Jesse Hilts, the plan is to drive from Texas to Los Angeles then move in with some friends and start a new life together. Later they decide to drive off the main highway and take a shortcut through an old road not in use for sometime they drive to a rest stop to use the lavatory where they are terrorized by a sadistic maniac who drives a yellow truck, as Nicole investigates she soon discovers the killer has a history in this area that goes all the way back to 1971. Not a bad movie the storyline and acting could have used a little more work, the single character in the entire film who had my complete attention was the killer, because he was the only one who didn't make any stupid mistakes unlike all his victims.

For first time producer writer RAW Feed, this was a very intellegent movie. Yet still very low budget, the story was great, the twists and turns were necessary and the deaths were gruesome. You will find this movie amusing, and worth the time. You just won't ever catch me stopping to take a break on a long road trip again!

Before I bought this movie, I read the reviews from both Amazon and Ebay, which it was rated a 3, and I bought it anyone because when it comes to horror films it's hard to know if your opinion will match others' opinions. The good things about Rest Stop are: it has a pretty sick/twisted plot which adds to its' mystery behind what's happpening to the main character. It does have gore/blood to appeal to fans of torture moments, and it does have scenes that will make you keep watching to find out what will happen next. Now for the negative, It takes a while for this movie to get going and there can be some boring scenes that make you wonder why it's even in the film, but overall a rather enjoyable horror film and I would recommend this to horror fans!