Two couples go camping in the middle of nowhere in the Australian Outback. As they drive, a road train approaches from behind and eventually causes them to crash. They survive, but see the giant truck waiting for them in the distance. It's gonna be Australian rednecks, right? We're looking at a Wolf Creek situation, right? Nope. In a refreshing turn, there ain't a redneck in the entire film. It's actually a whole lot weirder than that.
The couples find the truck empty and decide to drive it to the next town to get help. They don't make it quite that far; they all mysteriously fall asleep, including the driver, and end up stuck on an access road at an abandoned mine. The truck has other plans, you see. Turns out, it's a cousin of Christine. Instead of cargo in its back trailers, it has a really cool looking human grinding machine. It uses ground people for fuel ("soylent gas is people!") and proximity to the truck tends to make people insane enough to want to help find more bodies for the grinder. Maybe it's a little silly, but I thought it was a breath of fresh air in the field of "20-somethings stuck in the middle of nowhere" horror.
And that's it for the 8 Fangoria Frightfest movies. As is typical with these 8 movie fests, only two of them were any good (this one and Pig Hunt). So, by that pathetic metric, I guess the fest was successful. Though, Fangoria seems to have not released any of these things for this year, so I'm thinking this crop was the last we'll see. With Ghost House Underground only releasing 2 movies this year and After Dark dropping the "Horrorfest" from its name, I wonder if this fest phenomenon is dying out? (7/10)
