"Don't Look Back" indeed.

Rest Stop - Don't Look Back
Director: Shawn Papazian
Starring: Richard Tillman, Jessie Ward, Graham Norris, Joey Mendicino, Julie Mond & Brionne Davis
Genre: Horror, Suspense, Thriller
Rated: R (Unrated DVD)
Amazon rating: 3 out of 5 stars
My rating: 1 star

Plot: A year after Jesse and Nicole vanish, US Corporal Tom Hilts ventures off with girlfriend, Marilyn, and best friend, Jared, to find the missing couple. But things turn sour when the man in the yellow truck begins to hunt them down.

Review: Jaimie Alexander didn't return to fill in the shoes of Nicole Carrow for this movie, but Joey Mendicino does returned as tortured soul, Jesse Hilts. At least that's a plus, right?

Maybe it's because some sequels don't work. Or maybe it's because when introducing the origins of the man in the yellow truck and the family in the Winnebago, it sort of creates an air of confusion. No matter how much the first movie was worth a viewer's while, this one completely bombed.

Julie Mond, who takes the place of Alexander in the film, recreates Nicole with horrible acting, expressionless remarks and fails to keep the three-dimensional character that was created in the first part. Richard Tillman, as older brother Tom, does his best, but in the end Tom is unbelievable, unloveable and downright a shell of what could've been done.

Sequels to movies like Rest Stop don't work, never have and never will. Because sadistic killers who kill for the pleasure of killing, shouldn't be given a deeper reasoning. One should leave it to the Hollywood elitists and take pleasure in the fact that your movies don't suck as much as theirs. Got it, John Shiban?

Rest Stop

Rest Stop
Director: John Shiban
Starring: Jaimie Alexander, Joey Mendicino & Joseph "Joey" Lawrence
Genre: Horror, Suspense Thriller
Rated: R (or Unrated, depending on which you get)
Tag line: Dead Ahead
Amazon rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 stars
My rating: 3 stars

Plot: Aspiring actress, Nicole Carrow runs away to Los Angeles with her boyfriend, Jess Hilts. Upon their travels, they encounter a man driving a yellow truck who begins stalking the couple. When they come to a rest stop 60 miles from anywhere, Jess is kidnapped by the sadistic driver leaving Nicole to fend for herself. Throughout the night, she is mentally tortured by the man in the yellow truck causing her to lose herself in delirium. In end, one can ponder if Nicole isn't just haunted by her own feelings of guilt.

Review: A huge leap away from her Kyle XY character, Jaimie Alexander (yes, she has a nude scene) delivers her full acting potential, working with what she was given.

The plot of the movie reminds me a lot of that Paul Walker film about the sadistic truck driver, just with less driving and with more phantoms in the night. The story's riddled with Hollywood cliches, leaving the view disenchanted at times. However, rather than to toss this DVD aside to the do not watch list, leave it in queue on your Netflix because you just might be in for a treat.

While several have grunted that the movie was terrible, one has to keep in mind that the "internets" are a shallow group, not withstanding the intellects of others. Most of them want to be served a storyline that makes sense, which they can decipher before the end credits roll. Rest Stop is definitely not the brain candy they seek, nor is one that anyone who wants the Hollywood "five-paragraph" story that tells you what's going to happen, what's happening when it's happening, and what just happened.

Rest Stop leaves you in riddles, trying to figure out what exactly is happening and what is merely the psychosis of a guilt-ridden girl stranded in the middle of nowhere. Or perhaps they are simple holes in the plot, left unsuspectingly by an amateur film director slash writer, which Shibon is not.

Watch it or don't, it doesn't matter because in the end we all get what we deserve.