Rest Stop Movie Review

The latter-day resurgence of the splatter movie -- Hostel, remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and countless others -- appears to have no intention of slowing down any time soon. It's going so strong, in fact, that a new production company called Raw Feed has been formed to make nothing but splatter flicks. Rest Stop is its first production, and genre fans will probably find it an average entry into the format.

We begin with a familiar scene: A young couple traveling through the country where there's no cell phone service. They pull over at a highway rest stop for our heroine Nicole (Jaimie Alexander) to use the bathroom. When she comes out, her boyfriend has vanished, and she's very quickly in deep trouble, as she soon susses out that a serial killer is using this particular rest stop as his stomping grounds. She's next.

An hour and a half of Nicole vs. our unseen killer (he drives around in a yellow pickup with fog lights) follows, with Nicole exhibiting the usual panic-stricken vixen behavior, repeatedly returning to the cocoon of the rest stop where the killer is sure to find her and failing to escape time after time. Even when a cop shows up (played by Joey "Whoa!" Lawrence), he is quickly dispatched thanks to some of the least competent police work ever.

For every groan, though, Rest Stop has a sequence of impressive goriness, with director John Shiban (mainly a TV writer and producer) investing copious amounts of cash in buckets of blood and realistic effects, as the killer goes to work on people with staple guns and electric drills. It's nasty stuff, and those looking for the red stuff won't be disappointed.

But while the movie is plenty horrifying and gory, it's absolutely riddled with so many plot holes, inconsistencies, and simple errors of logic that internet forums are filled with complaints and way-out-there explanations offering a metaphysical take on the film, in the hope that it might help make the thing make some sense. I guess if you see the whole thing as some kind of elaborate ghost story (a popular intepretation), that might be of assistance.

On DVD you get three alternate endings and two behind-the-scenes tidbits.

You call this restful?