Three high-school friends (Laura Breckenridge, Jessica Lucas, and Katheryn Winnick) find themselves separately stalked by a lunatic with possible (read: entirely transparent) connections to their past. For Breckenridge this involves her and her boyfriend choosing the wrong convoy to join on a late-night ride. Tad Hilgenbrink plays Breckenridge’s boyfriend, and Kevin Gage plays an intimidating trucker whom the duo are convinced is a sicko. For Winnick it involves her being stalked by a killer clown doll whilst baby-sitting. Meanwhile, Lucas’ story involves her searching for her roommate who didn’t come home the night before, eventually leading to a hotel that looks like Bates Motel crossed with the remake of ‘The House on Haunted Hill’. Rena Owen plays a grief counsellor who pops up now and again.
Most anthology films have a wrap-around story, and this one does too, but it’s different to most. By having each of the girls stalked by the same guy but in totally different ways (essentially three horror movie plots) it just doesn’t work.
The fact that the screenplay comes courtesy of Jake Wade Wall (who wrote the remakes for ‘The Hitcher’ and ‘When a Stranger Calls’) is no surprise given that the first story is clearly a ‘Road Kill’/’Rest Stop’ hybrid (with a twist that was only half unpredictable, with some red herring casting), and the second should be titled ‘When a Strange Clown Calls on Halloween’. And once you get to the third story (maybe sooner) you realise that instead of a traditional anthology, you’ve essentially got three variants on the same damn story dressed up to look different. It actually takes on the anthology form entirely needlessly, and in my view, fatally.
The third story is the best, simply because it’s not blatantly ripping anything else off. It takes an awfully long time to get going, and some of the character decisions are moronic, though. Some of the gore is nice, but that’s about it.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Overall this was a reasonably well-acted, but poorly thought out, ultimately unoriginal anthology flick that isn’t my idea of an amusement. And it sure ain’t my idea of horror.
