Rip off.
This film is a rip-off of the vastly superior ' Dead End' Avoid this and watch that is my advice.
shareThe idea of a person or group of people experiencing strange events and eventually discovering that they're actually dead (usually because of a car crash) has been used in numerous films, TV shows, comic books and short stories for several decades. The earliest examples I can think of are the movie Carnival of Souls (1962) and an episode of the original Twilight Zone entitled 'The Hitch-hiker'.
Apart from Reeker and Dead End, other recent films with the same twist include Campfire Tales, The Locals, Soul Survivors, Stay, Room 6, and Rest Stop. If you're going to call Reeker a rip off, then so is Dead End and all these other movies. In my opinion, there are no truly original ideas anymore - the best we can hope for is that film-makers keep finding entertaining ways of retelling old stories.
Incidentally, I've seen Dead End and consider it to be a very good movie, but I prefer Reeker. Each to their own.
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Good points misbegotten. Several times during the movie, I tried to rack my brain to figure out if I'd seen Reeker before. Since I had seen so many elements in other movies. I've seen at least half the movies you mention, but Vacancy (2007)is the one that came most to my mind. The ending is different, but the whole vibe while they are at the deserted rest stop is similar. Probably because it's the most recent one of the lot.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Valency? That's interesting. I would have said Identity. The feel of this movie felt so much like Identity (the one with Cussak) to me.
But, yeah, I agree. When I saw the end I completely thought of Carnival of Souls.
I don't get why everyone is so quick to yell "rip-off". There's one element that's similar to another movie, and I think Reeker did it better. That doesn't make it a rip-off.
Yeah, a a lot like Identity but obviously in that movie the twist is that the people are all actually parts of his multiple personality being killed off. But it is like it. I much prefered Identity!
Reeker is also dirivitive, and somewhere like a cross between Jacob's Ladder and Silent Hill and then Identity thrown in for good measure!
I just happened to catch the tail end of this movie and I thought of Dead End, which I truely enjoyed. Yeah, it may be a "rip-off", but really what new movie now a days isn't? Either it's a remake or similar to another movie. There just doesn't seem to be anything that hasn't been done yet, so the directors/producers and such try to add their own little twists and changes.
shareYup, I saw screen shots that really reminded me of Identity: desert, creepy motel in the distance, flashbacks...
Vastly superior to Reeker; I always recommend Identity to anyone who hasn't seen it. (But this wasn't totally awful either, despite the silly title!)
Identity was better then both of these films (Reeker & Dead End). The real difference is that no one was really dead in Indentity. It was just a man with multiple personalities living in his own little world watching each of his personalities die. The twist at the end was marvelous though. I didn't see that one coming. It was like 2 twists in this film.
The other film I was thinking of as well was "The Others", which was kind of a ghost movie with Nicole Kidman. There are a couple scares, but it's mostly a slow going film that takes a while to build up. Still the acting is decent.
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- "The idea of a person or group of people experiencing strange events and eventually discovering that they're actually dead (usually because of a car crash) has been used in numerous films, TV shows, comic books and short stories for several decades. The earliest examples I can think of are the movie Carnival of Souls (1962) and an episode of the original Twilight Zone entitled 'The Hitch-hiker'."
Well, the oldest film I know about people experiencing strange events and finding out that they're dead, is OUTWARD BOUND (1930), based on a stage play. This voyage aboard a ship is also remade in 1944 as BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.
Then in 1945, we have the British DEAD OF NIGHT. A classic in horror film history.
And in 1964 the also British 'DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS' is about people in a train, who have also died on the way (starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Donald Sutherland). They only find this out in the end.
"Being lost in a film is totally fine."
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Another very similar movie "Stay" came out at the same time, Both are ripped of Jacobs Ladder
Misbegotten -You gave a super analysis in the Radford thread, thanks
Darkness lies an inch ahead