Film Review: Wrecker (2015)

SYNOPSIS:

Best friends Emily and Lesley go on a road trip to the desert. When Emily decides to get off the highway and take a “short cut,” they become the target of a relentless and psychotic trucker who forces them to play a deadly game of cat and mouse.

REVIEW:

Wrecker is another generic evil trucker film, with the villain chasing people down an endless desert highway. This story has been done so many times in so many ways, and it can either get really creepy or really ridiculous. Emily (Anna Hutchison) and her friend Leslie (Andrea Whitburn) are taking a wild road trip while tossing back beers and talking about men, when they encounter an ominous wrecker towing a car. The windows of the wrecker are dark and a pentagram and an upside down cross are hanging from the rearview mirror. I thought the wrecker would have looked much more threatening with some kind of demonic hood ornament, because apparently the driver is a satanic mechanic.

After a really long road chase between the women and the wrecker, all they see are his boots, so of course they spend a lot of time checking out what kind of shoes every man they see are wearing. I was desperately wanting something truly terrifying to happen, but the road chase and boot checks just went on and on for what seemed like forever. Anna Hutchison did a really good job acting terrified, and the film was edited really well. Emily is driving a really nice red mustang and the movie felt like a car commercial because it was just endless driving down a highway.

Emily and Leslie end up with a flat tire from the road chase and when Emily gets out to check out the tire, she falls and hits her head and passes out. When she wakes up Leslie is gone. Insert yet another road chase with the wrecker as Emily is convinced the wrecker driver took Leslie, but he was nice enough to change her tire while she was passed out. I honestly felt frustrated with this movie because there was so much potential to do more than one road chase after another. Anna Hutchison was the best part of the film. Her reactions were solid and believable. And again, the editing was extremely well done. I kept thinking of films like Joyride and The Hitcher, which I loved, but this film just never delivered like those films did. Was the driver just some crazy serial killer or was he a supernatural entity? I also love Jeepers Creepers, another film with a super creepy character chasing people in an old decrepit truck. Wrecker was just one really long car chase with very few scares and it just left me wanting more and comparing it to other similar films that actually had a plot.

Even though the women had no cell phone signal out in the middle of nowhere, a police car finally shows up, and unfortunately that didn’t end well for the police officer. Emily continues to chase the wrecker trying to find Leslie, until she runs him off the road and the wrecker is barely hanging off the edge of a cliff. I really wanted to get a glimpse of the driver, and was hoping he would be some guy in a long black trench coat, or even the Babadook himself would jump out of the wrecker, but no such luck. The wrecker just sat there, half off the cliff and half on the road, while Emily continues to freak out for a ridiculously long time. She finally discovers what happened to Leslie, but you kind of have to use your imagination, because nothing is shown. In fact the only blood in this film was when Emily hit her head when she fell.

It was just Emily versus an unseen tow truck driver and when it finally seems like Emily wins the game they’ve been playing throughout the film, the ending left it open for a sequel. After an hour and twenty-three minutes of nothing but driving through the desert, I hope there isn’t a sequel. I know Anna Hutchison from a few Lifetime movies and also Cabin in the Woods, and she’s not a bad actress. She managed to carry this film all by herself and that was the most impressive thing about it.

2 out of 5 Skulls