DVD: Rest Stop - Don't Look Back

If must be tempting for actors, especially those on the rise and looking for steady work, to accept parts in gore infested, horror lacquered thrillers. You get to scream bloody murder as screws are drilled into your knee, and you can look sexy all tied up waiting to be tortured by crazy dead people. Do you want to actually play some dramatic role where you cry your eyes out and that nobody will see or reach into the depths of your primordial soul and emote the agony of the damned? That's what the thesps in Rest Stop: Don't Look Back must have thought when they signed onto this direct to DVD sequel to Rest Stop.
The twist, and it isn't necessary to have seen the first one to get the second one, is that the people killed in the first Rest Stop are back as ghosts to wreck havoc on some twentysomethings. There's the dweeb, his friend on leave from the Army and the hot chick. The ghosts include creepy twins, a dwarf, some religious fanatics and the rest stop killer, a kind of wandering truck driver with a penchant for torture.
Director Shawn Papzian pulls the right strings for this kind of genre piece: abandoned road stops, deserted gas stations, lonely motels. The scares are in line with the kind you see in theatrical releases like the Saw franchise. If Rest Stop: Don't Look Back had name actors you'd see it on theater marquees. As a direct to DVD release it will find an audience who take this type of horror experience seriously.