Having not seen David Payne's 2005 effort, Reeker, I wasn't sure what to expect from No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker. Set-up as a prequel to the previous film if what's on display here is any indication of the original I'm going to stay as far away as possible. As an effort to mix a common slasher movie with a mindf*ck of a plot, Payne's follow-up does have a few nifty moments and some bloody effects but the main reason it fails so miserably is simply because it pretty much rapes you in the logic department and the script feels so sloppily strung-together that many events seem to happen at random.

Things kick-off on a pretty good note too as we open in 1978 in the middle of a barren desert where a hitchhiker finds himself run over (and his tongue cut out) by a seemingly innocuous travelling machine shop salesman. Turns out he's the killer dubbed the "Death Valley Drifter" and after being captured at his morbid "kill shack" he's quickly given the gas chamber for his deeds.

Flash forward to present day where Payne decides to throw together various people at a roadside diner. There's the waitress who sees a blood-filled toilet, some policemen, and the casino thieves who've shown-up and taken them all captive after a so-so stand-off with the cops that ends with a cellular phone causing a big explosion by somehow sparking spilled gasoline. But it's about to get a lot worse for all of them.

See, it turns out The Reeker is back and ready to toy with them all. His arrival is foretold by the smell of rotting flesh (hence his nickname) and he likes nothing better than to screw around with the psyches of anyone who crosses his path. This gives Payne the opportunity to stage plentiful lame fake scares, pepper in a conversation about having sex with fish for failed comedy, and have our cast go through the motions while being stuck in limbo while our gas-masked killer sporadically shows-up to murder them.

While watching No Man's Land I felt like I was trapped in the room with an obnoxious drunk who's babbling incoherently. Not a lot of what goes on here makes sense like when a police officer sees a strange man in a hospital gown enter a motel room and doesn't bother investigating or multiple scenes of our poorly defined characters running around in the dark and bumping into the unseen barriers stopping them from escaping - though said barriers do deliver a pretty cool moment where a car crumples after hitting it.

There's also a few alright effects involving bodies that have been torn apart remaining reanimated and conscious but it's all for naught as I found myself constantly annoyed and aggravated by Payne's apparent disregard to story-telling. Perhaps he intended the viewer to be familiar with the original but, from what I've read elsewhere, that shouldn't be the case as a lot of those who've seen the first film are calling this nothing more than a slender rehash.

I suppose Michael Muhney is our hero as Deputy Harris but I can't really say I found any of the performances here appealing. The cast was filled with actors who've appeared in smaller roles in plenty of low-budget films but everyone is just so bland and unmemorable, I find it hard to recall any of them doing much of interest. At least Michael Robert Brandon gives our salesman a distinctive, and creepy, look.

No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker was 88 minutes of bad. Even though the tacked on shock ending sets up a third entry, I can't begin to tell you how glad I was when it arrived. This was one of eight films released by Lionsgate under the "Ghost House Underground" banner (which includes Dark Floors, Brotherhood of Blood with Sid Haig, and more) and doesn't give me a lot of hope for the others in the set - though I did enjoy the heck out of Dance of the Dead, so maybe I'm being a little hasty. (Chris Hartley, 8/2/09)

Directed By: Dave Payne.
Written By: Dave Payne.

Starring: Michael Muhney, Stephen Martines, Desmond Askew, Mircea Monroe.