We’ve all experienced the dangers of the road to one extreme or the other: victim or perpetrator. Our parents and caretakers probably taught us to be forgiving and courteous drivers, but many forget those lessons out of anger or impatience. Tailgate follows the horrific outcomes of one family’s experience with road rage.
Van drivers hold a peculiar position in Europe at large. They are regarded much as truckers in America, though with a slightly different cultural spin. This neo-slasher uses mundanity and prevailing cultural norms to its advantage over and over again.
The film starts off slow, the first twenty or so minutes building to the initial road rage conflict. The rest of the film is tense and thrilling despite some plot holes and missed opportunities by the writers.
The driving in this movie was one of the things that really stuck out to me. Beyond the fantastic stunt driving that takes place at several points of the movie, the director uses out-of-focus shots, background movement, and other subtle cinematography tricks to make the hunting done by the nameless van driver feel really intense, methodical even. His warped moral code and pure focus were very much reminiscent of Anton Chigurh, the antagonist of No Country for Old Men. That extends to his thematics of being an exterminator and using the tools of that trade to commit his murders.
My original draw to this film was to compare it to what many consider to be the penultimate driving thriller, Steven Speilberg’s 1971 Duel. While it is a different animal, leaning more heavily on tropes of the slasher film, it is in the same category and enjoyable in a similar way. While leaning on slasher elements for most of the film, it skews many of those same tropes and elements in interesting and exciting ways.
The thing that surprised me most in watching this film is the feminist thematics that become very apparent as the family finally reaches their destination. It is the father’s anger management issues that fuel this entire situation, his fragile pride taking precedence over the safety of his family, and a challenge to his masculinity which eventually sparks the killer’s desire to hunt him. The one disappointment is the way that the existence of cell phones, nosy neighbors, and police assistance isn’t dealt with in satisfying or realistic ways.
The dub is jarring at best, so listening in the original Dutch with subtitles is recommended. In all, Tailgate is an interesting addition to the horror genre. With no on-screen death and a focus on the feeling of being hunted, this film redefines what one can do with the elements of a slasher film and is recommended.