By Kari Milchman

Perhaps you have 92 minutes to spare and are for some reason incapable of using that time to masturbate, sleep or stare at the wall. If so, then Rest Stop may be worth viewing. The horror flick is best described as the unfortunately comedic version of last year’s Wolf Creek—which was a sufficiently scary, low-budge slasher flick about a trio of unfortunate travelers in the Australian Outback who fall prey to a deranged local. But where Wolf Creek succeeded in presenting suffering that even the sickest of animal-torturing pre-serial killers couldn’t fathom, Rest Stop just begs the existentialist question: Why? Why did this film get made? Why are any of the characters doing the shit they’re doing? And, most of all, why am I watching this craptastic piece of cinema? 

Rest Stop begins with Nicole (Jaimie Alexander) and her boyfriend Jess (Joey Mendicino), best known for playing the role of himself on MTV’s “The 70s House”) as they embark on a road trip from Texas to Hollywood, so we know they have dreams and independence and all that good stuff teenagers who run away from home are chock full of. After a juicy quickie by the side of the road, Nicole complains, “I have to pee.” Somewhere between taking a bathroom break in the most disgusting of public toilets and hitching a ride in the freakiest of trailers, Nicole realizes that Jess is gone and she’s the object of a psychopathic stalker’s affection. 

Joey Lawrence cameos as the typical blond, big-breasted horror movie ditz, only without the peroxide and breasts. He contributes the film’s most gut-wrenching scene when his park ranger character gets run over by a truck and viewers impatiently wait on the edge of their seats for him to go “Whoa!”

It’s almost as if Rest Stop follows Jamie Kennedy’s guide to scary movies from Scream: cheap tricks intended to gross you out or startle you through the same technique employed to cure the hiccups. Written and directed by John Shiban, who last worked on the increasingly-sucky WB series “Supernatural,” Rest Stop lacks a story arc and makes no attempt to connect or explain the myriad creepy (but ultimately just plain perplexing) elements throughout the film. So get “Blossom” on DVD if you miss Joey Lawrence; rent Wolf Creek if you miss being afraid of the dark; and rent Rest Stop if—well, we’ve already covered this.