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The second installment keeps in-line with the original film, but just doesn’t pull it off with as much style.

Props must be giving to the film makers behind the sequel to Rest Stop, instead of dumping the original story completely and moving on to new characters and a new location, they decided to pick up right were the first movie left off. Too many times these days, the straight to DVD sequels you find lining the shelves of Blockbuster have very little in common with the original films. Usually a new director and new cast take these films into a completely different direction than the original story and the title tends to be the only common ground. Rest Stop: Don’t look Back keeps the same writer as the original with John Shiban and moves the original films producer Shawn Papazian into the directors chair. John Shiban, who has written a few episodes of Supernatural over the last couple of years, sticks with the supernatural horror approach that was done so well in the first film. Unfortunately this time he may have taken it a little over board.

The story picks up with Tom Hilts, brother of Jess who disappeared in the original. Along with his girlfriend Marilyn and friend Jared, they head out to find out what happened to his brother who has been missing for the past year. We see the same cast of bad guys that was used in the original movie, including the very odd and very evil traveling religious family. This time the gore is more intense, with some pretty brutal torture scenes carried out by the unnamed driver. And you learn a bit more of the backstory of where the driver comes form and how he ends up being so evil.

Fans of the original film got to enjoy a great horror movie with a few glimpses of the supernatural elements. But you always felt that the majority of the events were based in reality, and you had a pretty good idea of what was real and what was not. The second movie travels much farther into the realm of the supernatural, with a mind numbing amount of scenes that don’t end up being real. And interactions of real characters with imaginary characters, that affect the story line and the real world. We end up going from an enjoyable supernatural horror movie, and spinning out of control into a story that comes off more like an extended dream than anything even remotely realistic.

Overall Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back has the same look and feel of the first movie, but the story and characters are less compelling.

3