Rest Stop: Don't Look Back

The corporal Tom Hilts (Richard Tillman) returns from overseas to his hometown Argyle, Texas, for a ten days leave with the intention to seek our his brother Jess (Joey Mendicino), who disappeared one year ago while heading to California with his girl-friend Nicole (Julie Mond). He drives his truck with his girlfriend Marilyn (Jessie Ward) and followed by his friend Jared (Graham Norris) in his old car to California trying to track his brother. While in the old highway California, Jared needs to stop his car in an old rest stop to go to the toilet and is attacked by the driver of a yellow truck. Meanwhile Tom and Marilyn wait for him in the next rest stop where Tom is also attacked and kidnapped by the driver of the yellow truck. Marilyn sees the ghost of Nicole in the restroom and realizes that they are facing supernatural evil forces.

"Rest Room" had a good premise but the writer did not know how to end the story. However "Rest Stop: Don't Look Back" is a disappointing mess, with a non-likable lead characters – Tom, Jared and Marilyn – and an invincible sadistic ghost. The greatest "attraction" of this flick is the sick tortures inflicted by the driver to his victims, removing eyes and drilling knees and legs, with lots of gore and pain. But the plot itself is very weak and worse than in the original movie. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Rota Mortal: Não Olhe Para Trás" ("Mortal Route: Don't Look Back")

I wasn't particularly impressed with the 2006 movie "Rest Stop", after having sat down not too long ago to watch it, so I was in no particular hurry to watch the 2008 movie "Rest Stop: Don't Look Back". But I mustered up and sat down to get it over with, you know, like yanking off a bandage from a deep wound.

The storyline in "Rest Stop: Don't Look Back", as written by John Shiban, was a fine mess of a scrambled heap of an inconsistent one if there ever was one. The narrative made little sense, and there were plot holes so big that I am sure the city depart of roads were ready to roll out and cover them up. I especially enjoyed how the brother named Jesse could just manage to disappear from a moving vehicle at a blink of an eye, but even more impressive was the fact that his brother didn't even go looking for him. I could go on with the lazy writing and plot holes here, but it is so bad that you have to watch it yourself to take it all in.

Was it the same actors and actresses from the 2006 movie? I don't know. Nor do I really care. Because both movies were subpar entertainment. But at least I can check them off of my watched-movies-list.

Visually, then "Rest Stop: Don't Look Back" has a little bit of gore and visceral mayhem, but nowhere enough to make up for all the shortcomings of the movie.

This is by no means a movie that will ever grace my screen a second time. Nor is it a movie that I would recommend horror fans to waste their time, money or effort on. But hey, having a sequel as bad as the predecessor must count for something, huh?

My rating of director Shawn Papazian's 2008 movie "Rest Stop: Don't Look Back" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

(2008) Rest Stop: Don't Look Back HORROR

Somewhat a continuation of what happened on the first movie, this time has young war veteran, Tom Hilts (Richard Tillman) along with 2 of his other friends- his girlfriend Marilyn (Jessie Ward) and Jared (Graham Norris) going on a search rant to find his brother, labelled who was missing from the first movie. They do this by retracing back to a lonely deserted highway called "Rest Stop", unbeknownst that it's entirely new dimension. Crossing their paths is a psychotic christian family in an RV and a deranged pick up driver. The movie has an interesting premise, except that I did not care too much for the ending.

The plot: Searching for his missing brother, a soldier runs into the killer ghost from Rest Stop, with predictable results for him and his friends.

Rest Stop 2 follows many of the conventions of the first movie, but manages to excise some of the pointless filler, replacing it with extended scenes of gory torture. Also, the origin of the ghostly killer is revealed, along with his connection to the creepy religious family. If you were dying to know these things, then I can understand why you'd want to see Rest Stop 2, but there really isn't much reason to subject yourself to this movie, when you can just read the synopsis on Wikipedia or the IMDb.

One of the saving graces of the original Rest Stop was its atmosphere and judicial use of gore. Unfortunately, the parts without gore tended to be a bit boring. In Rest Stop 2, the gore is pretty much its sole reason for being. As a result, I would recommend this movie only to fans of Rest Stop, gorehounds, and torture porn enthusiasts. Most other people will probably be either bored stupid or too grossed out. It's no masterpiece, but the gore effects are pretty good, for a low budget, direct-to-video sequel. Honestly, I'm a bit tired of horror movies that are nothing but young adults being tortured to death slowly, but I've seen worse ones than this. Some of the scenes were twisted enough to be memorable, but the movie itself really isn't.

I realize I may be in the minority liking the first, then again the IMDb boards seem to be there only to complain.

Rest Stop was a bit of slasher with a ghost story thrown in. There were several places where you just kinda went "oh...didn't see that coming". In part 2, it seems like they tried to duplicate those, but after seeing the first one, they didn't have the oh-wow value.

The ghost sequences were all pretty obvious (sans one) and the whole Family is a known from the first one so that wasn't a surprise.

As for the background they tried to give the people from the first one, while somewhat interesting, it just didn't seem to fit or feel quite right. One can only hope that if they make a third one it will all payoff. However, they need to finish the story instead of trying to keep stretching it out as it's getting a bit thin and there will not be much more you can do with the story.

If you liked the bit of gore from the first one, this one has taken it up a few steps. If you like the spooky atmosphere, that is there, but not as present as the first one. If you like old Ford trucks, you're in luck!