Road Kill

This movie has 22% of its votes giving it 10/10 stars. Every single one of these votes is, without a doubt from someone working for this movie in some capacity. This was one of the worst films ever made easily. The acting was the worst I've ever seen by far, it often seemed like a bad joke at times, characters becoming angry and hysterical for absolutely no reason. Not much of anything actually happens to anyone in this movie, yet they all completely loose their marbles, WHY!? Anyway, IMDb.com, you really need to moderate your voting system. Terrible low budget pieces of crap like this shouldn't be able to earn more than a 2 or 3 stars without getting thousands of votes first.

This film is absolutely terrible. I really wish that I had read previous reviews before watching the film.

It doesn't even deserve one star. It is so bad, it made me sign up to this site to write my first ever review.

When the closest the director had come to being part of a horror film was playing the role of a paralysed victim in 'Saw' it really says something about the quality that the film is going to be.

The story makes no sense what so ever, the acting is some of the worst that I have ever seen, the characters have no depth at all and the FX are so unbelievably bad, all of the props could have easily been found on Blackpool Promenade. The film actually made one and a half hours feel like a lifetime. I was hoping each scene was the last but kept thinking that it must get better... it didn't.

Avoid this film, do not let anyone talk you into watching it, if you do you will seriously regret it.

Sigh … Will I ever learn to stop renting horror movies solely based on their appealing DVD covers? I guess not … Here in my country "Road Train" got released in a blood red DVD box, with an illustration of the titular truck on the cover and a human skull processed into it. It's a lot grimmer than the Frightfest cover depicted here on the website, for sure. But anyway, the neat cover about concludes the positive things I have to share about this weak and pathetic attempt at making an Australian outback exploitation movie. "Road Train" easily could have been a terrific and straightforwardly frightening horror gem, somewhat of a crossover between the almighty "Duel" and "Wolf Creek", but instead director Dean Francis thought it would be cooler to do a pretentious and totally incoherent thriller with supernatural elements and complex character intrigues. Two couples on a camping trip in the Aussie outback are brutally rammed off the road by a gigantic truck and are forced to leave all their belongings behind in the car wreck. When they approach the truck, it's empty, but they are targeted by a gunman from a distance. They climb aboard the truck and intend to drive to the nearest community, but the imposing truck seemingly has a mind of its own and brings them far off-road to the middle of outback-nowhere. The first and perhaps most vital issue already starts with the introduction of the characters. They are two young couples that struggled with romantic betrayal and backstabbing in recent history, so it's absolutely utmost implausible that they would still embark on a camping holiday together! On top of being stupid and unreliable, they're also incredibly hateful and irritable people; every single one of them. It's never a good sign when in a horror movie you shamelessly hope for every character to die a horrible and gruesome death. The rest of the screenplay is a complete mess! The characters suffer from horrid hallucinations and descent into madness, yet few moments later they act totally normal and rational again. The hallucination sequences are thoroughly unelaborated (what do the red-eyes wolves signify, for example?) and most illogical. I can imagine that the heat and desolation of the Australian outback inflicts mental deterioration, but surely not after only a couple of hours? And if it's all caused by the truck itself, how and why? The massive road train looks impressive and effectively menacing, and the eventual revelation of what goes on inside the cargo containers is definitely morbid, but there isn't any background provided whatsoever. With the exception of one or two notable sequences, "Road Train" is also very disappointing in the blood & gore department. All the above and adding lousy acting performances, too many tedious parts and amateurish dialogs, leads to one of the most imbecilic horror flicks of the past years. If you ever come across a copy, I would strongly advise to give it a pass. Unless of course if you can't resist the enticing DVD cover art, which is something I can fully relate to.

Australian genre films are rare, and good ones are even rarer. Unfortunately this isn't one of the good ones.

Flat, uninspired characters populate this Duel/Jeepers Creepers/Maximum Overdrive/Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Wolf Creek rip-off. Not one of the characters is interesting or well acted enough to inspire anything but annoyance from the audience. The script is a failure in all departments.

The whole film is just... off, from direction to editing, to acting and writing. Sure, it's clear they had a low budget... but it's also clear they had enough of a budget to make a good movie. There were some interesting ideas there with the truck and whatever the whole story was behind it, but it was all undercooked and fulfilled the small amount of potential it presented.

There's a definite underlying psycho-sexual theme in there too, replete with phallic and yonic imagery. Too bad the film isn't good enough to earn a thorough analysis of the stuff going on underneath the surface.

With such a small selection of genre films emerging from Australia these days, one tends to pin their hopes on any new entry that trundles along the beaten path. It's sad that out of all the scripts out there, this is the one that got made.

I do not want to ruin the movie with the premise or the secret of the Road Train but I have to say it comes across as Silly. The actors were competent but not too likable. The FX were really bad in some places but I can excuse this due a low budget. The movie was soundly made from a technical standpoint.

However, the movie is not scary at all and really is stupid with the twist that occurs slightly more than half way through the flick.

This movie like all low budget movies has a 10 star review from someone obviously involved in the film at some level. No rational person who has seen more than 10 movies would give this movie more than 5-6 stars.

The movie is trying to be compared to Spielbergs very well made Duel and to a lesser extent Joy Ride. Anytime a movie comes out and the marketing mentions good films that it is similar to is the ultimate red flag. It is a dead giveaway the film is not good.

This is slightly better than most DTV low budget horror flicks but that is not saying much. I gave it a 4 out of 10 but will say the director shows potential.

Dean