Rest Stop does for rest stops what Jaws did for the water. Well, not really. I think rest stops do for rest stops what Jaws did for the water. As someone who spent most of my youth traveling back and forth between two cities in Pennsylvania, I’ve spent a lot of time at rest stops. Never have I been in one that smelled good, was clean, or felt safe. But that’s the fun! Is this the rest stop I’m gonna get stabbed at? Hmm, where’s that wailing sound coming from? The point I’m trying to make is that rest stops are inherently scary places and should be perfect for a horror film! So what happened with Rest Stop?
Nicole Carrow (Jaimie Alexander) and her boyfriend Jess Hilts (Joey Mendicino) run away in his convertible. On their way to California, they make a pit stop at a rest stop. After using the abhorrently disgusting bathroom, Nicole realizes Jess, and the car, are missing. The evidence of Jess’ presence is a lone cigarette on the ground. It soon comes to light that Nicole is being stalked by a mysterious man in a yellow truck. Can Nicole find her way back to civilization? Or will this be her final…stop?
(Hold for applause.)
Rest Stop is the debut feature film, as writer/director, from Emmy-nominated X-Files Executive Producer/writer John Shiban. Synchronicity strikes again. I’ve recently started watching The X-Files for the first time! I’m currently halfway through Season 3, and I’m loving it. A television writer/Executive Producer, who was held in such regard, at the helm of this project should have worked. This is back when television shows had 22 episode-long seasons at 45 minutes a pop. Unfortunately, Rest Stop really fails to succeed at anything.
Nicole is a nothing character with a single through-line of wanting to become something in California. And the amount of bickering between her and Jess, which is briefly interrupted by one of the most mid-aughts sex scenes, is beyond frustrating. Nothing could be more apparent than the fact that Nicole and Jess will inevitably break up. The only thing interesting they have going for them is that they’re running away. Their relationship is thinly constructed and haphazardly slapped together.
Films that don’t take chances [typically] can’t succeed. One can appreciate Shiban’s ideas for Rest Stop, which has a mid-film twist that shakes things up. But when your mid-film twist is either Nicole completely fabricating events in her head or that the man in the yellow truck is the world’s most efficient cleaner, it feels like you’ve lost control. There’s nothing wrong with pivoting the tense, and straightforward, first half of the film into a psychological stalker. It just doesn’t work. Another possibility could be Rest Stop was a lost plotline for The X-Files where an isolated bathroom at a rest stop was able to quickly clean up crime scenes, making it the world’s top location for hitmen.
And don’t even get me started on the weird religious cult that’s basically funding this whole thing. Okay, you got me started. When Nicole arrives at the rest stop, there’s an RV there. When Jess goes missing, Nicole pounds on the door to the RV. Flashes light up the windows, which are obviously from a camera flash illuminating the window. Nicole knows people are in there, but no one is responding to her. At the exact moment Nicole runs out of options, she is invited into the RV by a stereotypical group of a religious extremist family. Nothing about this works. It’s somehow both too predictable and so unpredictably harebrained.
There are some dashes of horror sprinkled throughout this clogged toilet, but it ends up too unfocused and rushed to do anything interesting. Is it a fun mid-aughts horror/thriller? Sure. I watched this film at least 10 to 15 times over the years of my childhood between AMC FearFest and/or SciFi’s 31 Days of Halloween, and I guess I just never realized how bland this film is. But maybe that’s just the nostalgia of my youth’s October Halloween programming.