brendan2's Full Review: Rest Stop - Don't Look Back
Tom is a corporal in the U.S. Army who's home for ten days. He wants to use the time to search for his missing brother Jesse and Jesse's girlfriend Nicole. He brings his own girlfriend Marilyn and best friend Jared along for the ride. The crazy guy in the yellow truck from the first Rest Stop starts terrorizing them. The crazy religious freaks from the first film get some more screen time as well.
Rest Stop takes its name seriously. In an overlong sequence featuring loud flatulent sound effects, Jared realizes he needs to make a pit stop. Similar but grosser sound effects provide the soundtrack to his stay in a disgusting port-a-potty. After Jared ends up covered in feces, the scene shifts to Tom and Marilyn. Before a minute has passed, Marilyn decides to use the facilities as well, so we get to see her sit on a toilet which is at least just as disgusting as the port-a-potty.
As in the original Rest Stop, the characters are completely idiotic and unlikable. The chick that plays Marilyn can't act to save her life, and her character is a drunken slut, but she ends up looking good compared to the film's other heroes. When Tom knows Nicole and Jesse have been missing for a year and are presumed dead after the police and the kids' parents failed to find them, why would he drag his girlfriend and best friend along on a dangerous mission to find them? Jared is ugly and irritating, and as comic relief, he fails miserably. If a guy talking in a raspy voice while playing with dinosaurs or making fart sounds makes you laugh uncontrollably, you'll love Jared.
At one point, Jared finds Nicole has mysteriously appeared in the back of his truck, creepily saying, "Thanks for the ride." She is filthy and bruised, with cuts all over her body, including a number carved into her stomach. Naturally, he doesn't call an ambulance or the police, or even Tom and Marilyn. Instead, he takes this opportunity to reveal his long-buried crush on her and attempts to screw her in the woods.
I hoped that, since the characters took two cars on their journey, they wouldn't succumb to the "car breaks down in the middle of nowhere" syndrome. Of course, the characters split up, so we get to hear that familiar sputtering engine. Scary. The killer keeps a collection of eyeballs, so we see a few eyeball gougings. There's also a pretty nasty scene involving a drill. This stuff takes up maybe ten minutes of screen time, and it's not worth sitting through the rest of the film to see it. The religious freaks exist just to be creepy, the killer barely even kills anybody, and don't even get me started on the goofy "supernatural" angle.
The gore is the only okay part of the movie, but the in-between scenes sure are boring, consisting of childish, unfunny humor and stupid characters doing stupid things. The film is only 89 minutes long, but it drags for every one of them. Rest Stop: Don't Look Back does top the original in one respect: it manages to be even worse.
For those masochists out there, the DVD comes equipped with a variety of extras, including a commentary, deleted scenes, an alternate ending with a twist just as inane as the "real" ending, and a "Mythology of Rest Stop" featurette.
No rest for the wicked! One year ago, the mysterious Rest Stop killer drilled, ripped and splattered young road trippers Jesse and Nicole. Now three m...More at HotMovieSale.com
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