I wasn’t really sure if I should do this one as a formal review or one of those titles without a score. It’s based on true events but with a lot of liberties taken and apparently merges a lot of different events into one. It felt a bit like a true crime adventure/re-enactment though so in the end I bypassed the score. That said, this is absolutely a film that would be pretty bottom of the barrel. It’s way too dark and the villain gets away with a whole lot. The whole time you are hoping he will go down but these films don’t always tend to have a happy ending.

The film switches between the present and the past as its method of ramping up the drama. We see that in every year for the last 4-5 years, a man in a white van has been going around murdering women. In the present story, he has his sights set on a girl named Annie and seems to show up wherever she is. The guy follows her around everywhere and unfortunately she has built up a long reputation of being someone who tells lies for attention. Nobody is taking this threat seriously, will she be able to defend herself?

Now the whole premise is built around nobody believing Annie which is part of the annoying part. I assume this is where things get dramatized for the movie because I can’t possibly imagine this being the case in real life. When you have a mysterious van following you to school, appearing on the property, etc. people should start to be taking notice right away. Her reputation isn’t even relevant by that point, there is a clear and present danger here.

At least Annie had a gun but then it gets confiscated because her parents think that she is going totally crazy. It doesn’t help that her older sister is not being even remotely helpful. She is wanting to go on adventures of her own without stopping to think about how that will affect Annie. Her younger brother is at least doing his best but is naturally too young to be all that helpful here. At least he did help Annie get the gun early on.

So what you end up with here is a film where it feels like every action is futile. There is really nothing that Annie can do to take the upper hand here. How could there be? She’s closer to being a kid than a full adult and has no real way of fighting back. She lives in more of a rural area so there isn’t anywhere to go and there are many times where she will be by herself or just with her best friend. It’s quite a long walk to school.

The film ramps up the tension by looming this dark fate over Annie the whole time but without a way to really fight back, it’s definitely not my kind of thriller. Cutting back to the older years to see all the victims getting murdered as well was really the cherry on top in terms of dooming the film. This feels like a slasher, just with a lower body count than usual. In general I don’t really think mass murderers need to be remembered and given films, just let them die out to history.

As a main character, Annie is basically the best character here by default. At least she’s trying to do something but it is a shame that she had been so used to lying on the regular. She is also still manipulated a little too easily like going to a party just because her friend wanted to go. Clearly the host hadn’t wanted Annie to be there which is why there was no invite so why go somewhere when you aren’t clearly wanted? Doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

Generally speaking films based on true events are best for bio pics and tales of incredible heroism. Doing films that are more based on tragedies or villainous figures are rarely going to be on the same level. You could say that this film is really based on the positive outcome that things could have been a lot worse but it still feels hollow because of how we had a body count here that stretched across years. It works as a cautionary tale on why you always want to have your guard up but that’s the kind of moral you can do in many other ways.

The cast is also really small here so there isn’t much of a distraction from the white van plot. The only thing you could point to is the school plot where Annie crushes on one of the guys and her friend tries to play wingman. There isn’t really enough time to this plot for the whole thing to have a lot of development though so even as a distraction it’s definitely more of a mild one. I’d rather they not try and make a sequel out of this one.

Overall, This is what I’d call more of a mean spirited film. There aren’t many happy moments to be found here at all. Instead it is a slow descent for Annie as she is driven to the brink and the villain gets closer at all times. The ending is rather expected but still on the lame side. Definitely not satisfying in the least. You’re really hoping for more of a proper closure instead of what happened here. Now that may be limited based on how the events played out but that is a small consolation to the viewer. Just give us the fun ending where Annie whips out a gun and takes the main villain down. It felt like the setup was absolutely there with the gun getting a lot of emphasis before and then vanishing after that.