Stay Off This Road Late At Night. Or Don’t. Whatever. You’ll Probably Be Fine.
Main Cast: Brooke Peoples and Bruce Davison
Director: Nicholas Smith
What the HELL??? Seriously? That was, like, the WHOLE movie? Well, alright.
So, there’s a local legend in St. Charles, IL. Park on the railroad tracks on Munger Road and the ghosts of local murdered children will push your car off the tracks. This is the same plot used in another movie I saw a while back, but I can’t, for the life of me, remember the name and if I’ve reviewed it. I think I have.
Anyway, one night, four teens, Joe (Brooke Peoples, Insidious), Corey (Trevor Morgan, The Sixth Sense), Scott (Hallock Beals, The Last Song) and Rachel (Lauren Storm, The Game Plan) pile into Corey’s Jeep with a video camera and a bottle of baby powder and head off to Munger Road. The plan is to sprinkle the rear bumper with baby powder and use the camera to document proof of the ghosts’ existence. What they hadn’t counted on was the return of the killer of those children after his prison transport ran off the road, killing all of the guards and freeing their one prisoner. Convenient.
The guys get their footage, but the girls are unimpressed because they’ve obviously faked it, but on the way back to town, Corey’s piece of shit Jeep stalls in the middle of the road. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s no cell service this far out. Also, it sounds like there’s someone outside the car. They all huddle in fear, trying to slink down into the seats and hide.
Meanwhile, back in town, Chief Kirk oven (Bruce Davison, Willard) and Deputy Hendricks (Randall Batinkoff, Kick-Ass) are looking for the killer who may or may not have come back to town. Sorry, can’t remember his name. He never appeared on screen and I’m not going to bother going back through the movie to find it.
As bad as this setup sounds written down here, the execution is even worse.
I mean, you’ve got four strapping teens in the prime of their life, two of them obvious jocks, against ONE man, and their best idea is to duck down? Way to represent.
Still, I have to give writer/director Nicholas Smith SOME credit. The experience of watching this movie wasn’t terrible, and in fact had a few pretty tense scenes. I was never 100% sure where the story was going from moment to moment and I didn’t predict the ending at all.
Wait, let me back up. I mean I didn’t predict the last few minutes of the movie. To call it an ending is an overstatement. If you need more details, watch the movie. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. One thing I WILL tell you is there was supposed to be a sequel, but it never happened, at least not yet.
None of the performances were anything to brag about; it’s standard slasher flick stuff with the expected screams and gasps in all the right places. The cops, also, were clichés for this type of movie. Also, I’ve never been to St. Charles, IL, but if this movie it any indication, they have a population of about 12.
I won’t waste too much more time on this one. The movie was chugging along nicely for about an hour and twenty minutes. It was cheesy and dumb, but hit all the notes it was supposed to hit. But, man, those last few minutes, and knowing there isn’t the promised sequel, it just took all the good will the movie had built up to that point–and believe me, that wasn’t a lot–and shot it in the head by the side of the road before peeling off in a cloud of dust. I can’t even.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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