‘Roadkill’ Ending Explained & Movie Summary: Is The Highway Hunter Alive?

If one is in the mood for an indie thriller that gives off the vibe of a B-movie, then one might consider watching Roadkill, which is the new film by Warren Fast. The story is pretty simple, but Fast tries very hard to lend the film some thematic depth, which just isn’t possible with the kind of story he is trying to tell. For whatever it’s worth, the movie is unintentionally funny in a lot of places, and you can have a good time just admiring the effort the crew must have put into making this film. Although I must say that if the budget was a little better, this could have looked way better than it does. There is no intent to save on shoe leather in the film, which makes this drag a little more than it should have.

Spoilers Ahead


Plot Synopsis: What Happens In The Film?

A man is reliving his past, when his mother used to terrorize him and went to such lengths as to kill his dog. The man jolts out of this nightmare only to find himself in a run-down shelter near a highway. Who this man is and what he wants are unclear at this point. We are only told that it’s 1983, and perhaps this was a time when people wandered around the country and hitchhiked from one place to another. Our Hitchhiker seems like one of those people who had decided to just risk it all and depend on the kindness of strangers to roam America, or perhaps he was running away from something. There was news of a serial killer on the loose, but thankfully he had a knife to protect himself, and soon he got a lift from a young girl who seemed to be addicted to sticky-pops.


Why Did The Driver Kill Frank At The Diner?

The road trip continued for the Hitchhiker as the lollipop girl agreed to be the Driver (as per the credits) and take him to Abbeville. She had a great car that could easily take them across the state. They stopped at a gas station, and the Driver was catcalled by the gas station attendant. The Hitchhiker had a difficult first meeting with Sheriff John Teagan, who had made a pit stop at the gas station. There was an exchange of information about where the Hitchhiker was headed, but he didn’t give the full information to John. The Driver saw the sheriff from inside the gas station and waited until he went away. Then the duo went to a diner. A worker called Frank looked at the Driver the wrong way, and she took him to the bathroom, tempting him with the prospect of a good time, but then proceeded to beat him to death. The Driver was a product of a broken home, and she had been abused by her father. A consequence of that upbringing was that she had a violent reaction to people looking wrongly at her or making a pass at her. She had also killed the gas attendant and his assistant back at the gas station.


Why Did John Think The Hitchhiker Had Kidnapped The Driver?

John had just seen the Hitchhiker and not the Driver when he saw the red Nova at the gas station. Deputy Corey Vernon had seen the red Nova on the side of the road as the Driver had driven it there to save a tortoise on the road. Later, when Corey was reporting the murders at the gas station, he was told by John to be on the lookout for a Red Nova. Corey was shocked, as he had missed the opportunity to nab the killer. Now John thought that the Hitchhiker was the killer, as he had only seen him at the gas station. He thought the Hitchhiker must have taken the Driver hostage.


Who Was The Real Highway Hunter?

Even before the Hitchhiker had met the Driver, two murders had been committed. A couple had been murdered on the highway, and it seemed like the Highway Hunter had returned after a year-long hiatus. There was a car chase to catch the Driver and the Hitchhiker, but Corey couldn’t nab them. Later, John had to come in, and when he caught the duo, the Hitchhiker was about to stab the Driver with his knife. The reason seemed to be that the Driver had triggered him by calling him a freak. Perhaps that reminded him of his mother’s insults, and he wanted to kill the Driver because of it. A lot of other things came out of the exchange. It seemed like the Hitchhiker had killed the couple earlier, and he was the original Highway Hunter.

The Driver was on a mission of her own to kill those whose addresses were found in her father’s notebook. He was an abuser, and she understood that he had made note of all the abusers in the nearby areas, and perhaps they were his friends. The Driver wasn’t going to leave them alive. The Hitchhiker and the Driver were both killers, it seemed, and they had a connection between them. They had a plan to get away from the police, which is why even after the Hitchhiker had tried to kill her, the Driver was paying attention to his instruction to attack John, who was under the impression that she was just an innocent young woman. John and Corey both turned out to be perverts, who the Driver ended up killing, as she never left such people unpunished.

During Roadkill‘s ending, the Hitchhiker thought they could both survive together, but the Driver was furious because he had pulled a knife on her. There were also the bodies of four people in the trunk, and the Hitchhiker figured that she had killed Frank and countless other people. So both of them could take on the moniker of the Highway Hunters because the Driver was killing the perverts, the abusers, and their families, while the Hitchhiker was killing people who called him a freak. The Hitchhiker tried to run away and burn the Red Nova, but he had taken the bodies of the mother and her two kids out of the trunk. They were the same family that he had seen earlier, imagining what his life would have been like with them. This all happened before the Driver arrived, and it’s unclear when she got the time to kill everyone and put the bodies in the trunk. It seems inexplicable—possibly a plot hole. The Hitchhiker managed to stab the Driver, but he was wounded as well and died while reaching out towards the families’ corpses, as if trying to taste that good family life before dying. The Driver was stabbed but wasn’t dead, as she wasn’t found at the crime scene. She was still at large, and there was one last person she needed to take care of in Abbeville, and it was possibly the Hitchhiker’s mother, who was an abuser and was the primary reason why the Hitchhiker couldn’t control his temper and had turned into a killer. Allison at the diner had seen the Driver and could later recognize her, but it is highly unlikely she would.


Ayush Awasthi
Ayush Awasthi
Ayush is a perpetual dreamer, constantly dreaming of perfect cinematic shots and hoping he can create one of his own someday.


 

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