Interesting in its more naturalistic look into the world of truck-stop prostitution, the movie unfortunately puts more of its attention onto a formulaic and cliché-heavy horror.

A young girl joints a group of sex workers after separating from her cultist family. The group mostly makes their business in a rest area popularly called “Candy Land”, which is highly frequented by truck drivers, and in the motel where they all live convivially. Their relative calm life will suddenly come to an end after a series of bizarre murders start surrounding them.

Let’s get things right out of the way, it is even spoiled by the poster, yes, this new girl that joints the group is the killer. But, theoretically knowing that should not be a big deal as the intention of the movie is more to build a suspenseful horror (when will the people surrounding her will find out that she is the murder) rather than a one grounded in mystery. Sadly, the motivation and modus operandi of the killer are weak, just as the overall structure and pace of the film.

The motivation is way too familiar, that of an apocalyptic cultist who thinks that by killing people she actually saves their souls and sends them to meet the Lord. This is united by the fact that the killings are conducted by stabbing them with a blade hidden in a wooden crucifix (wacky killing weapon check). But what seems more absurd is that none of the characters seem to take notice at any point that there is something weird with this girl whose arrival coincidently happens at the same time that the killings start. Not even the sheriff (ok performance by William Baldwin) who recurrently appears to solicit the services of Levi, the male prostitute of the group played splendidly (by far the best performance in the film) by Owen Campbell, seems to notice anything. I mean, even if he is a sheriff with dubious moral grounds, and who could even be considered abusive, I would expect for him to be a tiny tad more intelligent.

But, as it has been already mentioned, the film also suffers from some more profound issues. The way the story is structured do not support the more apparent dramatic elements of the film for which we should feel and sympathise with the characters. The sudden arrival, acceptance and “professional start” of the newly arrived in the group do not enhance the bond that we would supposed to build between the characters. Plus, the quick turn to full slasher mode, with increasingly over-the-top deaths until a climactic death considerably before the end of the film, causes that the rest of killings to be rather lacklustre. All that causes you to reach the end feeling quite “meh”.

Still, there is a silver lining to the film. The acting from the cast playing the young sex workers is quite good, as it has already been mentioned Owen Campbell steals the show as Levi but also Sam Quartin (as Sadie), Eden Brolie (as Riley) and Virginia Rand (as Liv) deliver really good performances, with different nuances and attitudes to the type of life that they have. Sadie is the one that has some doubts on her current life, Riley is sort of the numb one to her situation (she is most surely the most experienced of the group), Liv is sort of the wild one looking for quick and easy money, and Levi just seems as your standard good-natured guy that found himself in this situation and just tries to embrace it as positively as possible.

In fact, it absolutely feels like the film would have been way better if, instead of trying to turn it into a common slasher, we would have focus on the lives of these quite interesting characters living a quite overlooked type of life. The world (the service area and motel), rules (how do you deal with customers) and hardships (physical abuse and pain) that surrounds them seems that could have built in itself a quite good socio-realist drama. Unfortunately the vision of John Swab (writer and director of the film) was a complete different one.

In conclusion, we find ourselves with a weak film mainly because of a generally wrong approach to its content. The good set and good performances by a relevant part of the cast are undermined due to a wrong choice in genre and tone for the film.