There are some truly bad movies out there. The majority may have something of redeeming value, maybe one decent joke, a mildly memorable scene, or a character you enjoy. Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back offers nothing of the sort. It’s an abysmal, bottom of the barrel, completely unwatchable piece of junk.
The “torture porn” genre has slowly been growing recently, spurred on with stuff like Saw and Hostel. Rest Stop wants to be one of those films, but doesn’t offer anything remotely original to set it apart. The two brief torture scenes are hardly noteworthy, the gore factor is non-existent (although backgrounds offer loads of blood covering everything), and there’s no sense of fear or terror.
So what if it’s not original and the script feels like it's plagiarizing a number of other films? That could be tolerable. However, Rest Stop literally goes nowhere. The plot is incredibly cheap, one of its characters played by Jessie Ward is completely unlikable, and the story literally feels like it offers no progression. The story exists purely for the sake of its violence, and it doesn’t even deliver on that front.
If you’ve seen the original, this sequel picks up a year later, and you’ll be reminded of that multiple times. The two victims now have family and friends coming to look for them down one of those movie highways that could exist only in a film. The killer, a trucker brutally murdered by an insane religious cult, lives on through some stupid Indian curse that’s never fully explained. Apparently, some of the dead live on as ghosts (or something... it’s never stated), and can continue to suffer or kill.
The total body count is never really clear since the ending of course has to set up another sequel after this disaster. For a slasher/torture/horror movie, Rest Stops offers nothing the three genres are known for, nor does it try something radically different. This is a truly terrible movie that has no reason to exist. (No stars)
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