Rest Stop: Don't Look Back Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't make a pit stop for this dud.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 7, 2008

If you're buried without your eyeballs, your spirit is cursed to wander the Earth. Restless, lost, in pain forever.

At time of writing, Warner Brothers has oddly not delivered a screener for the first film in this series, Rest Stop: Dead Ahead, so this review is based solely on knowledge and insight gleaned from this second entry, and with no benefit of an understanding of the events from the first film that play a large role in this sequel. If Rest Stop: Don't Look Back is any indication, one can safely assume the first film in the series is a true classic, an intricate, deep motion picture offering insight into the emotional and spiritual underpinnings of mankind, backed by a powerful script and award-winning performances, all the while combining the best horror elements ever committed to film from masters such as George A. Romero, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Carpenter, and with an eye for history-changing cinematic magic that so often amazes audiences in the films directed by such legends as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese. All kidding aside, Rest Stop: Don't Look Back is a treasure trove of cinematic trash, a movie with a plot assembled from the very worst elements of the spiritual, psychological, and emotional horror cinema convention. Along with bland characters, a regurgitation of Saw- and Hostel-like torture sequences, and shoddy villains who seem to reside in some sort of spiritual limbo, Rest Stop: Don't Look Back is another in a long line of dull, fly-by-night horror pictures with no redeeming value.

Tom takes aim at another negative review of 'Rest Stop: Don't Look Back.'

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back tells the tale of a trio of friends in search of the lead characters from the first Rest Stop movie (Jess and Nicole, played by Joey Mendicino and Julie Mond, who reprise their roles here). Tom (Richard Tillman), a Corporal in the U.S. Army and on leave for 10 days of R&R from Iraq, is joined by his girlfriend Marilyn (Jessie Ward) and friend Jared (Graham Norris) on the search. They conveniently stop at a gas station where the employee recognizes a photograph depicting Jess and Nicole, and he points our heroes in the right direction. Things begin to unravel when Jared develops an upset stomach and separates from Tom and Nicole to use a filthy port-a-potty, despite the fact that there is a rest stop some two miles away. Jared becomes the victim of a drive-by port-a-potty ramming by a beat up yellow truck, and afterwards finds Nicole, barely dressed, bloodied, and beaten. Or does he? Meanwhile, at the rest stop, Tom is abducted and tortured, while Nicole seems to hallucinate in the ladies room. Will the heroes come to their senses, be able to discern reality from grisly, nonsensical hallucinations, or will they fall prey to the same horrific fates as their friends?

The plot is as jumbled and meaningless as it sounds, and I doubt it would make much more sense had I seen the first film beforehand. Combining elements of ancient Indian rituals, the spirit world, an RV full of deranged religious zealots whose presence makes absolutely no sense in the context of this film, and who knows what else, Rest Stop: Don't Look Back is like a bad dream, one that is practically unexplainable and best forgotten moments after waking up. Perhaps that is what the filmmakers had in mind for this one, some sort of nightmare scenario straight out of the darkest corners of the audience's imaginations, but believing that there is any sort of rhyme or reason behind this movie is truly grasping at straws. The characters are dimwitted, the dialogue is atrocious, the directing is bland, and there are absolutely no horror elements here -- just a few scenes of drill bits to the legs and an eye gouging to "scare" audiences.

One of the primary problems is that this movie can absolutely not stand on its own. The content demands that audiences be familiar, and seemingly thoroughly so, with the first film to "understand" this sequel. The best sequels, particularly those not attached to major projects such as The Lord of the Rings, are crafted in such a way so as to tie in to the previous film(s) enough to satisfy established fans, but explain enough along the way so as to not lose newcomers. Rest Stop: Don't Look Back seems to assume that its place in cinema history is such that everyone who is anyone is familiar with the first film, and therefore incorrectly surmises that no audience will see the second without prior knowledge of the first. Nevertheless, the movie is hopelessly doomed either way. From what newcomers can piece together, the story is of little consequence, anyway, as the film seems to incorporate as much off-kilter material and characters as possible to "creep out" audiences, and somehow loosely tie it all together in the guise of a torture flick. Don't stop at this Rest Stop.

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back pulls into Blu-ray with a 1080p, 2.35:1-framed transfer. Noise is abundant on this release in the opening minutes of the film, but it clears up afterwards, but only occasionally. It covers the frame in many shots and is never consistent in its presentation. The image is all over the map, from what looks to be low grade 8mm home video footage to standard 35mm coverage. It goes from noise free to covered in grain, from a normal color scheme to completely out of whack contrast and odd hues. It makes for a very difficult transfer to judge, as there often seems to be no rhyme or reason for the sudden shifts in tone and appearance. The transfer is only moderately sharp, with questionable detail but fairly strong rendering of colors. Flesh tones appear accurate amidst the ever-shifting appearance. Black levels are good, but not great, sometimes appearing as a dark shade of gray. There are some white speckles over the print, though again, thanks to the ever-changing appearance of the film, one cannot judge this absolutely.

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back includes a lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack. The audio is fairly rich and full with music that spreads out nicely around the front and occasionally into the rear. Dialogue is generally strong and accurate with a few instances where it inexplicably becomes slightly hard to hear. Effects are loud and clean. The film features some decent bass and a few rather true-to-life sounding gunshots, but there's nothing to get too excited about in this one. It is perhaps the very definition of a straightforward soundtrack, neither enthralling nor disappointing, neither boosting the movie sonically nor is it so bad so as to degrade the movie even further.

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No scenic overviews here. Rest Stop: Don't Look Back contains no supplemental materials.

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Rest Stop: Don't Look Back is a jumbled mess of a horror movie with no redeeming qualities. It's not even a run-of-the-mill horror piece, failing to even best films like Wrong Turn and Cabin Fever. Perhaps when the filmmakers script the inevitable third entry, they can think completely outside the box, hire Mike Myers, and torture Guru Pitka for 80 minutes. I can almost guarantee that would sell more discs than The Love Guru and both Rest Stop movies combined. Rest Stop: Don't Look Back is another subpar disc from Warner Brothers and Raw Feed. With only adequate audio and video transfers and nothing in the way of bonus materials, this disc is one to leave to collect dust on store shelves.