- Directed by: Warren Skeels
- Written by: Sharon Y. Cobb, Warren Skeels
- Stars: Madison Wolfe, Brec Bassinger, Ali Larter, Sean Astin
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raFEJ4kh2Uw
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s well-made and based on a real crime situation, which makes it creepy on a fundamental level. But it is rather long and drawn out. It hops around in the early 70s, doing a great job of capturing the look and feel of the decade. The van driver chooses to fixate on one character, rather than just the random attacks, so there’s drama and a supporting cast for us to care about.
Spoilery Synopsis
A woman gets into a car and drives away. It’s 1970, and we see a white van following her car. She pulls over, crying about something, and doesn’t see the man from the van until it’s too late. Credits roll.
In 1975, Annie falls off her horse. She goes home, and her mother, Helen, freaks out and tells her to shave her legs. At dinner, her father, Richard, talks business. Margaret and Annie are very competitive sisters. It’s a very strict household.
Back in 1971, we watch a woman go out for the evening. She’s immediately kidnapped by the man in the white van, who we never see.
In 75 again, we watch as the family goes to church. As the preacher talks, we see that the man in the white van is still active out there and he follows the family car back to their home.
In 1972, a woman comes out of a disco and first with a man who drives a white van, and he gives her a ride against her will before killing her with an ax.
Annie likes the new boy at school, Mark Newsome. We see that Annie’s horse is upset by something outside, and when Annie goes out, she sees the van there. When she tells her mother and Margaret, they don’t believe her wild stories. She finally gets to talk to Mark, and they hit it off. On the way home, Annie and Patty see the van, but it’s only a telephone installer.
Little brother Daniel keeps playing with his father’s rifle, which annoys everyone. Annie ends up showing him how to use it.
1973, and a woman at a motel leaves the pool and gets grabbed on the way to her room.
Annie keeps seeing the strange man outside the house. One night, near Halloween, her parents go out for dinner and Annie sneaks away for her boyfriend, leaving Annie and Daniel alone. The van man comes around and terrifies them until they get the gun and shoot at the van. When Helen and Richard come home, the story comes out, and Margaret blames Annie for making it all up. Punishments are disbursed all around.
In 1974, a girl takes her dog out for a walk and things go badly for her. This time, he shows the kidnapped girl to an older man who calls him son.
Annie sees the guy outside again and gets Richard to go outside with his real gun. He shoots a possum in the trash can. Annie gets even more paranoid after that, actually going so far as to lock the front door!
The three kids go to a drive-in, and once again, Margaret sneaks off to be with her boyfriend. Annie runs into Mark there, and he’s come with the school slut, Joanna, who is having a Halloween party in a few days.
It’s Halloween, and Annie and Patty go to Joanna’s party. Margaret is actually nice and helps Annie get ready. Mark, it turns out, is more interested in Annie than Joanna, but they can’t stay very long. On the way home, on horseback, the two girls spot the van again, and this time it chases them. Annie falls off her horse and runs. It’s tense, but she eventually loses him.
When she gets home to put her horse away, the man is there waiting for her. The man knocks her out and ties her up, but the horse, on the other hand, kicks the man and knocks him out. It’s a contest of who will recover first, but Annie eventually winds up in the back of that van. She opens the door and jumps out (nobody tried that before?).
Annie runs home, and this time, Margaret sees the bad guy too. They do the cat-and-mouse things in and around the house. They hit the man with his own van just as the policeman arrives.
One month later, both Annie and Margaret have boyfriends, and the family is much more well-adjusted. We cut to someone buying a white van from a car lot. On the radio, the reports talk about the bodies, which have just started to be discovered.
As the closing credits roll, we see that it’s now 1976, and the van is still out there…
Brian’s Commentary
It’s very retro, but this story wouldn’t really work if it were set in the modern day. The cars and the music try hard to make it seem authentic, but it’s the telephone shenanigans that really sell it.
We assumed right off the bat that Sean Astin would be the killer, since he’s the only major star in the film, but it soon became obvious that it wasn’t him. Then we figured it would be Mark, but that wasn’t it either. Turns out, we never do see or know much about the killer; he’s a mystery man. This was all supposedly based on true events, so maybe that’s just the way it worked out in reality.
It’s a pretty slow moving film, and that might be my biggest complaint with it; the kidnapper is way too patient. Annie obviously knows he’s up to something, and she’s told plenty of people, but any kidnapper in their right mind would just move onto a new target. If he was really into Annie for some specific reason, that would make sense, but otherwise, he just seems to grab women who are convenient; Annie was not convenient.
It all looked good, and the acting from the main characters was decent. It is, however, very slow paced, and that may turn off some viewers.
Kevin’s Commentary
It’s set in an alternate 1970s timeline where people attend high school into their 20s, but everything else seems about the same as our 1970s. Seriously though, they had the 70s elements down solid. The acting is good. The story itself seemed thin to me, and stretched out. Which made it feel low stakes and a little on the dull side. As Brian pointed out, the van driver fixating on Annie was out of character for his usual MO of seemingly random abductions. Almost like they needed to lay it out that way to fill up a movie. I’d call it just okay overall.