By guest contributor Anna Pease
I began watching The Man in the White Van (2023) with high hopes that it might be a grimy 70s exploitation style ode to true crime – specifically something akin to Chuck Parello’s 2004 film The Hillside Strangler, which faithfully portrayed the crimes of cousins Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi with a seedy gruesomeness that left the viewer feeling in need of a shower. Lawrence Bittaker aka the Toolbox Murderer drove a van; maybe it’s about him? I wondered; nope; try again. The Man in the White Van, despite its claim to be based on true events, has absolutely nothing to do with true crime in the 70s. How disappointing!
What it is about – and I use this term loosely since the plot is rather threadbare – is a girl in her late teens called Annie, who lives in an impossibly massive house in the countryside and rides around on her pony, Rebel. Get it? Rebel, because she’s a rebel! Although, presumably not in a confederate Dixieland racist way, because she vibes with socially progressive southern rockers like Neil Young and Creedence. Annie’s conservative family have had enough of her tomboyish behaviour and are absolutely over her stinking of horse. This is particularly irksome to her older sister, a debutante who is obsessed with having a private phone extension in her room, but slightly more tolerable to her gun crazy little brother who yearns to “protect the homestead” and thinks his sister Annie is a rootin’ tootin’ modern day Davy Crockett. Amid this homage to The Sullivans – where god-fearing folk go to church on Sunday (even Annie, and she has to wear a dress like a girl! Yuck!) there is an ominous white van around, which appears to be following and kidnapping young women to fulfil nefarious means.
The van is particularly innocuous: it’s basically a shagged old white van that a painter and decorator or window cleaner might use, not the ominous black van which features in the similarly 70s true crime inspired flick Black Phone (2021), or the terrifying, clattering monstrosity driven by the Creeper in Jeepers Creepers (2001) – nope, its just a white van which turns up every now and then and… revs its engine and….flashes its lights. It’s important to point out that when it does this, the soundtrack absolutely shits the bed and plays obscenely loud and jarring, crunching white noise, presumably to insinuate that this is an extremely scary and harrowing occurrence. Understandably, after a few rounds of revving and flashing, Annie is absolutely crippled by fear and confides to her family that she believes that the man in the white van is following her.
For some strange reason, because Annie is a tomboy and rides a horse, this makes her a liar and her entire family disbelieve her because apparently perverts and murderers didn’t exist in the 1970s. This was the first thing that really didn’t track for me and without going into detail and therefore spoilers, there seems to be a bizarre insinuation that somehow being pursued by a pervert in a ropey old van can act as the glue that can ultimately bring a dysfunctional family together again. Who knew?
There are several issues with this film, which make it both arduous and extremely irritating to watch – firstly, it really does feel like a television dramatisation with a focus on high school relationships and coming of age themes. I had to remind myself throughout that it was meant to be a horror/thriller, since, although there are very few violent scenes, they are introduced very poorly and make very little sense. Secondly, there is a rolling year counter which accompanies these violent incidents and I honestly had absolutely no idea that this was supposed to represent the years this kidnapper, killer, window cleaner – white van dude was active. I only worked out its purpose when I was three quarters of the way through the movie. Thirdly, the film has a penchant for what I call ‘fake’ or ‘false’ jump scares – Annie has seen the van and she’s on edge etc., and a hand reaches out and grabs her but… oh it’s just her mum telling her that dinner’s ready. This was grating by the third jump scare, but by the fifteenth you really are sick of it: it actually made me angry. It’s an incredibly lazy and cheap mechanism to employ in any film and this film really rinses it ad nauseum.
Nice things to say: it’s shot quite well, the acting is acceptable, but genuinely, that’s all I’ve got. This film is a confusing mess with a variety of deadends and plot holes which seem to suggest it was a basic idea that had a rushed and poorly structured plot cobbled together last minute before going into production. It’s both dull and teen-movie-esque and at the same time, so lacking in depth and nuance that it’s actually laughable. Oh dear, I hope they don’t make a sequel.
The Man in the White Van is available on digital download, DVD and Blu-ray from 29th September 2025.