Pointless Twist Ending: Rest Stop

I recently watched this movie via the wonder that is Netflix Instant View, so I feel like I didn't actually have to pay for watching it. Nevermind the fact I pay a monthly fee to watch these movies, it's free in my mind, so don't ruin my wonderful little bubble I live in where I watch free movies. Okay?

Anyway, I recently watched Rest Stop. It was a moderately interesting slasher flick with a decent premise: a teenage couple runs away from home to try to get to Hollywood and gets caught in the middle of fucking nowhere at a (get this) rest stop. The boyfriend gets lost and the girl starts to look for him. There's a weird, creepy RV in the parking lot with someone taking pictures from the rear window. The girl is then tormented by a guy in a pickup truck that kills her boyfriend. And the people in the RV let her in only to reveal they are crazy-as-fuck religious people who saw her do her boyfriend in the woods. So she escapes from them and gets back to the rest stop. And that's where things take a turn for the worse. And I don't mean plot wise.

*As per the title, there will be spoilers as I talk about the ending, so read no further if you care about the ending*

The main girl is sitting in the bathroom when she finds a girl in the closet crying. She's been tortured by the same guy the main girl is being tortured by. While this new girl shrieks, the pickup truck guy comes back and our main girl blocks the door. Pickup truck guy (henceforth known as PTG) leaves because he's easily foiled by a 110 lb girl blocking a flimsy door. You then find out that the crying girl was actually a past victim that died years before. Then she disappears. To honor GOB Bluth, it was an illusion.

Well, I was actually kind of interested in the movie until this happened. It's billed as a "psychological" horror movie, which is basically like saying it's a "Sixth Sense wannabe". But you know what? It doesn't end there!

The original girl then leaves the safety of her bathroom and goes to the ranger station to phone for help. Luckily for her, a cop comes to her rescue. Unluckily for her, the cop is the most inept officer ever and he gets run over by the PTG and paralyzed. She manages to drag the cop into the bathroom, puts up her ridiculously flimsy barricade, and PTG guys is again discouraged. She tries to shoot PTG, but she shoots like a stormtrooper. Instead of continuing to shoot at PTG, the paralyzed cop tells her to euthanize him. This is actually the best scene of the movie. The girl wrestles with the idea of having to shoot a cop who has kids. She eventually sucks it up and shoots the guy in the head and puts him out of his misery.

Except she shoots like a bond enemy's henchman and the cop is STILL ALIVE. He starts shrieking and she shoots him again, this time doing the job correctly. And PTG has come back to set the whole bathroom on fire (bet you forgot PTG was still here). She crawls out and finds out that the cop she just shot was KILLED YEARS AGO (see, it's a bigger revelation if I type it in CAPS). Whoa, that's psychological. She then decides to take on PTG one on one. She blows up his truck with him in it and can finally rest easy. ONLY HE'S RIGHT BEHIND HER! And then you find out that he's as supernatural and unnecessary as the rest of the people in the movie. It ends with a shot of our main girl in the closet crying but she's not actually there because she's a ghost!

Really, the movie was interesting (well, sort of) until you start in with all the ghosts and imaginary crap and the fact she can't get away from the rest stop. If it had all actually happened, the movie would have been a lot more intense. But instead, the best scene of the movie is a crappy dream sequence basically, as is the rest of the movie. It's pretty watered down and lame as it is, but the whole supernatural element seems to take it to a whole new level of jackassery. It just didn't resonate well with me.

So there you have it, another pointless twist ending. If done properly, it could have worked, but it wasn't done well.