Producers: Terri Lubaroff, Anne Marie Gillen, Warren Skeels, Paul Scanlan and Michael Nole   Director: Warren Skeels   Screenplay: Sharon Y. Copy and Warren Skeels    Cast: Madison Wolfe, Brec Bassinger, Skai Jackson, Gavin Warren, Ali Larter, Sean Astin, Noah Lomax, Addison Riecke, Julianne Arrueta, Darrius Thomas, Dylan Summerall, Stacy Ann Rose and Patrick Kirton   Distributor: Relativity Media

Grade: D

Here’s a movie that will take you back, as the saying goes, in a couple of ways.  It’s loosely based on the case of serial killer Billy Mansfield, Jr., who confessed to killing four girls and young women in northern Florida in the 1970s and burying them in the backyard of his family’s home.  He was caught in 1980 after murdering a California woman.  So the production design by John Rusnak and Lauren Spalding and costumes by Tiger Curran try to capture an early seventies small-town ambience as best they can on an obviously limited budget, and Gareth Paul Cox’s rather grubby cinematography adds to that vibe.  The pop songs dropped into the soundtrack do so as well. 

But there’s another form of throwback at work here.  “The Man in the White Van” resembles nothing more than the chintzy made-for-video so-called thrillers that filled the shelves of Blockbusters in the eighties and nineties.  If you’re nostalgic for that sort of stuff, here’s your chance.

The script is set between 1970 and 1975, the earlier five year represented by quick shots of young women being abducted by a faceless guy driving a white van and 1975, the core of the story, concentrating on the mysterious perpetrator’s stalking of Annie (Madison Wolfe), a high school kid living with her parents William (Sean Astin) and Hellen (Ari Larter), her older sister Margaret (Brec Bassinger) and her younger brother Daniel (Gavin Warren) on a northern Florida ranch (though, it would appear from dad’s frequent absences on the road, not a working one).  She’s the tomboy of the two girls, Margaret hanging around with boys and spending most of her time primping to look great and talking on the phone.  By contrast Annie loves riding her horse, a pastime her mother tries to dissuade her from.

Annie also has a habit of exaggerating, so when she begins saying that she’s being followed by a white van, nobody but her only school chum Patty (Skai Jackson) takes her seriously.  Her parents are especially dismissive about her crying wolf, as it were, though to be honest both seem obtuse about pretty much everything.  (When on one occasion William grabs a shotgun and goes out to investigate Annie’s prowler, he takes a shot and then waits an eternity before returning to his terrified family to report that he’s killed a possum that was rummaging around in the trash.  And Hellen—yes, that’s the spelling—is more concerned when her daughter tumbles off the horse than when she reports being stalked.)

Of course Annie’s telling the truth, and the movie ambles along tediously for well over an hour as that ominous van reappears repeatedly.  There are digressions, like Annie’s attraction to newly-arrived classmate Mark (Noah Lomax), but they don’t amount to much.

Director Warren Skeels, who also co-wrote the script, seems to have an idea of the sort of suspenseful sequences he’s after—most inspired by other, better teen horror movies—but he, Cox and editor Billy Gaggins don’t have the chops to pull them off; they’re either so lethargically paced or so chaotic that they don’t achieve the desired effect.  A scene at a crowded drive-in, for example, has potential but just dawdles, and one in which Annie, being chased by the stalker, hides under his van is dragged out far too long, to little effect.  When the big confrontation at the ranch finally arrives, Skeels is reaching for “Halloween”-level energy (Scott Borland’s score even moves into John Carpenter territory for a while), but it’s so sloppily executed that it pales by comparison to that classic’s sharp pacing.

Even the clips added to the final credits crawl are clumsy.  There are shots of solemn-faced lawmen—who have been conspicuous by their absence until now—exhuming bodies, but also a closing scene that indicates the killer is still on the prowl. 

Wolfe does a decent job as the damsel in distress, but elsewhere the acting is mostly of the amateur night variety.  Astin and Larter, old pros from whom one might have expected better, are especially embarrassing, but given the poorly-written characters they’re asked to play, the embarrassment is understandable.

This is a serial-killer potboiler that doesn’t even simmer, let alone get up a full head of stream.