Director Errol Sack and screenwriter Steven Shaffer’s Trucker feels like a blast from the past, whilst creating a potent horror icon for the future. This slasher is a Joy Ride meets I Know What You Did Last Summer style tale of recklessness, regret, revenge, and redemption that rockets along at killing speed. The plot may be ripe with tropes, all tried-and-true, but the picture embraces its influences and carries them off beautifully.
Scotty (Zach Cirino), Greg (Eli Cirino), Vanessa (Katherine Gibson), Dan (Dwayne Hilton Jr.), Cindy (Nicole Mattox), and Reina (Dare Taylor) are a group of thrill-seeking, live-fast-die-young teens. They, as I am certain you guessed, cause a dreadful accident via nothing short of driving lunacy. They lose a friend in the crash, which costs a trucker named Chris (Milo Hayden) his family’s lives. While the teens drive away, their bad deed did not go unseen, nor shall they go unpunished. Skip ahead a year. We find Scotty, Greg, Vanessa, Dan, Cindy, and Reina chilling as usual. Everyone’s playing it cool, but the lingering guilt of their wayward activities is eating away at the soul of Vanessa, who convinces two friends to return with her to the site of the crash. Though they are more content to let sleeping dogs lie, the trio hit the road.
“…our group of ridiculously good-looking teens enters the fray and springs the kooky codger’s crafty trap.”
Once back there, they learn that the misty-eyed hill-billy psycho, Old Man Levy (Chuck Cirino), has been awaiting the return of those rotten kids who believe they evaded murder. He saw what happened that night and has spent the past twelve months preparing a punishment worthy of the crime. After learning of directions to Old Man Levy’s Valkenvania from a dodgy gas station attendant, our group of ridiculously good-looking teens enters the fray and springs the kooky codger’s crafty trap. Searching for signs of life from the buddy they left back at the initial crime scene, the youths uncover something even more dangerous and diabolical.
Trucker may sound like it, but it is no mere “mindless” killer flick. It goes from high speed to ludicrous on a dime, ratcheting up the insanity to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 territory as the scintillating savagery explodes with delight. In the beginning, I believed this wouldn’t be anything other than a fun, if dumb, slasher, as this scenario and set-up have been done to death. However, it ends up in a quite different spot than expected. The quality of the filmmaking, performances, and storytelling for an indie horror is all top-notch, and make no mistake. The narrative takes some cool turns, and the kills are all cool-as-hell.
Trucker is a bloody good eighteen-wheeler of flesh-hacking glory that keeps running over my brain, which was stupid enough to play on the highway. It is a fantastically fatal crash waiting for you to happen across it. Plus, the finale leaves open the possibility for the monster at the core of the story to go on terrorizing the highways for years to come. Well, that is, until we get to part 4, which would be the one set in space.
For more information about Trucker, visit the Breaking Glass Pictures site.
"…a bloody good eighteen-wheeler of flesh-hacking glory..."
