Parents' Guide to The Man in the White Van

This extremely poor, lumbering thriller, which barely has enough ideas to sustain a 20-minute short, borrows most of its supposedly tense moments from dozens of other, better movies. Loosely based on the exploits of a Florida serial killer who operated in the early to mid-1970s, The Man in the White Van creates its biggest problem through the flashbacks to earlier attacks. These barely shown incidents of violence are over quickly, suggesting that they were simply random. But when it comes to Annie's story, it seems as if the killer is stalking her for days (weeks?) before ever making a move, which makes no sense. The movie has no real idea of how to generate suspense, settling on menacing shots of trees and even a telephone pole to suggest (maybe?) that the killer could be anywhere. It also uses jump scares, including many frustrating false ones (characters sneaking up on each other to jump out and go "boo!"), coupled with percussive noises on the soundtrack.

As for the killer, he's portrayed as supernaturally impervious to harm and lumbers around (faceless) like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. It's also supremely irritating that Annie's family doesn't believe her because she's prone to telling "tall tales"; they don't even seem to notice or care that she's visibly upset and panicking and clearly not lying. Annie is likable enough, and her bickering relationship with her older sister seems genuine, but the movie's efforts to give them lives outside of the terror don't add up to much. And somehow, someone thought it was a good idea to end The Man in the White Van with a "We Are the World"-type song to raise awareness about child abduction. To exploit these types of abductions for thrills and then turn around and get serious on the subject is insensitive at best.