Trucks (1997)

 

In an isolated scrapyard somewhere, a beat-up old pickup truck suddenly comes to life and kills the junk yard's owner.

Given the isolation, though, this bizarre bit of automotive homicide goes unnoticed.  The nearest town is the backwater of Lunar, New Mexico, and that's a fair few miles down the road.

Lunar is close the supposed site of Area 51, and local woman Hope has lived up to her name by starting a tour company aimed at UFO enthusiasts looking for their own 'close encounter'.

As more and more vehicles turn murderous, Hope and her customers are about to have an experience they will never forget ... assuming they survive.

Trucks is the second screen adaptation of a not especially good short story by Stephen King.  The first was the comically awful Maximum Overdrive,  a film starring a very young Emilio Estevez and (clumsily) directed by King himself.  

Ironically, the overall plotline of Trucks hews closer to King's original short story than the movie the author himself made.  It's still every bit as bad, though.

Firstly, we have the problem that all the characters are broad stereotypes, without any subversion or subtlety in their depiction.  We have the obnoxious redneck, the obnoxious townie, the aging hippie, the rebellious teen, the man of action, the voice of reason ... and absolutely nothing about any of these people will surprise you.  Well, except possibly for how stupid they are.  Like the guy whose response to being attacked by a host of killer trucks is to ... repair a truck that currently isn't running.  No-one suggests this might be a bad idea.  It goes exactly as well as you might expect.

Sadly, as stupid as the actions of the characters may be, the script seems determined to outdo them.  The trucks are shown adjusting their wing mirrors to spy on people.

I repeat: The trucks are shown adjusting their wing mirrors to spy on people.  Are we supposed to think that's how they 'see'?  Because if so, how do any of them ever successfully drive forward, given all the mirrors face backward?  And if they can see via other means, why are they mucking with their mirrors?

Don't worry that this might be a cherry-picked single moment of stupid.  There are plenty more.  For instance, there's a killer Tonka truck that we're supposed to believe successfully murders a postal worker, in a scene that is symptomatic of issue that the things the film wants - presumably - to present as scary, are in fact nothing of the sort.  Then there's the scene where an emergency response vehicle somehow inflates a hazmat stored within it and then controls said hazmat suit into axe-murdering two people.

Trucks is occasionally hilariously awful, but unless that's your thing, you should steer well clear.