In the summer of 1996, a film was released that introduced the world to a new version of Reese Witherspoon. The impishly innocent young girl with a wide smile and Louisiana drawl was gone, and in her place stood a sassy, foul mouthed trick baby with a gun, short skirt and some serious family issues. Director Matt Wright’s Freeway is exploitation-light — it’s a dark comedy that aims to shock by addressing transgressive themes like pedophilia, murder, racism, necrophilia, sex work and the cycle of trauma passed down within the family unit. Needless to say, the film is not for everyone, and most definitely not for the typical family moviegoer. Freeway hit a niche market that had critics praising the modern Little Red Riding Hood adaptation, even though it failed at the box office.
Vanessa Lutz (Witherspoon) is a 15-year-old who has been in and out of the foster care system. Her mother is a sex worker who turns tricks outside the motel they live in, and her stepdad is a drug addict who constantly makes sexual passes at Vanessa while getting high. When the cops bust Vanessa’s mom for soliciting and both parents end up in jail, instead of facing going back into the system, Witherspoon’s character cuffs her social worker to a bedpost and journeys out to find the grandma she’s never met.
When Vanessa’s stolen car breaks down on the side of the I-5, an unassuming stranger pulls over to help. Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland) is handsome, with a warm smile, soft face and big glasses hiding eyes that alternate between pity and lechery in a second. Despite Vanessa’s troubled upbringing, she trusts the stranger, highlighting the idea that if a person looks “normal” then they must be okay. It’s an interesting idea that Freeway explores, as the protagonist’s past has informed the way in which she sees herself as different from others. Bob speaks in a soothing tone using big words, likely reminding Vanessa of past counselors, people that she has been told are trustworthy. Bob does in fact let her know that he works with troubled boys and immediately starts working to lower Vanessa’s inhibitions. Bob informs the teenager that he is honorable, and Witherspoon’s character doesn’t know enough to recognize when she is being manipulated.
Having moved in and out of the foster care system, as well as a few juvenile detention facilities, Vanessa has lived a hard enough life to believe that she is worldly. But Vanessa is still just a kid, one who is always looking for an adult, any adult, to show her affection without ulterior motives. And while Bob presents himself to the young woman as a possible ally, the viewer sees what Vanessa does not — a predator.
Bob’s questions start out tame. He asks about Vanessa’s mother — why is she in jail? The teenager responds that she doesn’t want to talk about her mom because it makes her look like “a low-type person.” But Bob won’t back down, gently but persistently pushing Vanessa to open up. And she does, steadily getting more and more personal, revealing cruelty at the hands of foster parents, leading to an especially uncomfortable conversation. The two stand on an abandoned street, Bob hovering close to Vanessa as she forces herself through an agonizing retelling of the first moments of abuse. He touches her nose when she says it’s too big because she was hit in the face. Bob says he thinks it’s perfect.
Back in Bob’s car, things escalate. Vanessa still thinks she’s in a safe space, but the viewer sees more and more of the male character’s sideway glances, his ominous glares. Bob pushes Vanessa past what she wants and asks her to elaborate on her interactions with her step-dad; he pushes and pushes and then finally lays it out – “Did your stepfather molest you, Vanessa?” Witherspoon’s character is pissed and wants to stop, but Bob keeps up, telling Vanessa that the only way she’ll ever move on with her life is if she faces these things. He tells Vanessa that she can trust him. Maybe Bob is the only one she can trust.
Vanessa bites, and Bob asks how it felt when her step-dad touched her, pushing the line that she’s willing to cross further and further. His line of questioning is aggressive, but he successfully manipulates Vanessa so that she can’t see the game he’s playing. Witherspoon’s protagonist finally breaks down and screeches: “It feels like I’ve got ‘daddy’s little fuck-hole’ tattoed on my forehead.”
And while the moment should have clued Vanessa in on Bob’s motives, he keeps going and forces her to admit the kind of thing that no young girl should ever have to say out loud. Finally, Vanessa is pissed, and Bob is amused, and the audience knows now more than ever that this man is indeed nefarious. As for Vanessa, her past informs her present, and she can’t seem to shake this “trashy” persona. No matter what Vanessa does in Freeway, she attracts people who are looking to exploit her. The girl’s luck has her moving from asshole to asshole, and every one of them is more than happy to take advantage of her naivety. Those who truly love Vanessa, like her fiancé Chopper, are dispensed early on, used as a kind of rage-fuel for Vanessa later in the film.
When Vanessa finally pushes back against Bob, after she refuses to play into his perverted game, and when she finally recognizes the same old deviant male behavior that she’s all too accustomed to, he reveals himself. Bob whines about how he hates “garbage people and tells Vanessa that she is already a master at the manipulation of men, that it’s intrinsic to her nature, and she is forced to listen to his diatribe as he holds a straight razor to her neck after cutting off her ponytail.
In a lesser film, or in a movie that had any qualms with what it really wants to be, Vanessa would cower. She would beg for her life and do anything to escape. Vanessa would squeal and scream, and use every bit of her overly sexualized persona to try and convince Bob that she is different, that she is salvageable. Maybe there would be an overly graphic rape scene in such a film, a director’s attempt to transgress. But in Freeway, the audience is offered something more.
Vanessa is smart enough to recognize Bob’s modus operandi, recalling a news report of the “I-5 Killer” who kills and rapes teen prostitutes. She immediately asks Bob if he’s the one who’s “been killin’ all them girls,” to which he laughs and insists that he only ever has sex with the girls after they’re dead. The turn he takes is whip-fast as Freeway travels deeper into the bowels of the genre.
Quickly after Bob threatens Vanessa, she pulls out her fiancé Chopper’s gun and holds it to Bob’s temple. Vanessa screams at him as he switches tactics. Bob begs and cries crocodile tears that hardly feel genuine. After that doesn’t work — and after Vanessa continues to hit him on the head with the gun, telling the man that she’s going to turn him into the “pigs” — he changes tactics. Sutherland’s character tells Vanessa that there’s no way they would believe a girl like her over a man like him. He’s respectable, and what is she? Trash, daddy’s little fuck-hole, a trick baby. Bob’s words make too much sense, and all one has to do is look at American culture to understand his perspective.
We are a society that condemns poverty as the product of laziness. It’s easier to judge than to show empathy. The longer a kid stays in the state run foster care system, the more likely they are to serve jail time once they become adults. The more jail time a person serves, the less likely they are to be believed or given the benefit of the doubt. And because the only thing that often separates a vulnerable youth from a promising one is luck and familial/financial security, Bob’s words ring painfully true in Freeway. Vanessa could force him at gunpoint to the police station and the likely outcome would be her arrest.
So, Vanessa makes a different decision. She shoots Bob right in the neck, and then shoots him several more times in the back. Vanessa quickly drops to her knees and vomits, and then prays to God to forgive her, but she ultimately believes the decision she made was the right one, and never once tries to convince anyone otherwise.
What follows is a series of events that push Vanessa further into darkness and the inevitability of the life that is assumed for her. Bob survives his wounds, though they have transformed him into a monster, his outward appearance finally as deformed as his mind. The media and police condemn Vanessa as a maniacal terrorist who intentionally targeted Bob for his money and the sole purpose of murder. They bring up her stints in juvenile detention centers and history of solicitation, ultimately proving Bob right all along. It’s much easier for the system to comprehend and side with what looks like an upstanding citizen than to listen to a young girl when she says she was victimized. The utilization of Vanessa’s past as evidence of delinquency is a tactic found in many courtrooms that hear cases of sexual assault, as defense lawyers grill victims on their prior sexual activity, their clothing, their consumption of alcohol — it isn’t so much determining the guilt or innocence of the accused, but shaming and blaming the victim.
Vanessa doesn’t show remorse, and so the judge sentences her to be tried as an adult. But the reality is that there is no reason for her to regret her decision. Vanessa understands the likelihood of Bob escaping justice and decides to take matters into her own hands, just like other women in exploitation and rape-revenge films (Jennifer Hill in I Spit on Your Grave, Mary Mason in American Mary or Jen in Revenge, to name a few of the best). Vanessa even says that she attacked Bob to make sure he didn’t have a chance to enact his violence on other girls.
It isn’t until later, after Vanessa has escaped jail and gone on the lam, that the police determine she may be telling the truth by acquiring a warrant and finding Bob’s treasure trove of photographic evidence, his trophies. And while this moment is a real “gotcha” for the cops (and also for Bob’s oblivious wife, Mimi, played by Brooke Shields), it isn’t lost on the viewer that the police should have done their job in the first place and looked into the account that Vanessa told them about upon her initial arrest, covering all angles without letting the media run away with the story. When the police first interview Vanessa, one cop in particular attacks her story with accounts of her past behavior, all but saying that there’s no way she could be telling the truth. In a way, it’s in part that lack of care that allows Bob’s final act, the completion of this fucked up Red Riding Hood tale, as his new monstrous form makes its way to grandmother’s house.
The end of Vanessa’s story doesn’t end like many modern adaptations of the Mother Goose classic, with a brave hunter cutting the grandmother, still alive, out of the belly of the big bad wolf. It’s more akin to the 17th century version from Charles Perrault, with a pedophilic wolf luring Red into his bed and no trace of a happy ending. And though Vanessa does end up vanquishing the villain (by kicking his ass and strangling him to death like a full-on warrior princess), it’s no secret that her life is not going to get much better than it is. Vanessa’s smile is wide as she wipes the hair from her sweaty forehead and asks one of the cops who showed up on the scene, late of course, for a cigarette. But the freeze-frame that Freeway ends on is no victorious moment.
In Freeway, Vanessa isn’t a girl who has won a battle, but one who has lost a war. Witherspoon’s character lost the moment she was born to a mom who couldn’t take care of her, and raised in a society that believes that if someone is lower class, it’s because they don’t work hard enough and deserve to be there. Vanessa’s innocence was always an unintentional ruse, a trick she played on herself without even knowing it, because when a person sees the kind of things Vanessa did at such a young age, and has to deal with a constant influx of abuse and neglect, there is no innocence to start out with. The lack of empathy from every person that Vanessa encounters, other than those who can relate to her due to their own lower social standing, would undoubtedly harden even the youngest person.
No matter how much Vanessa yearns to believe that Bob really will help her in those early moments of Freeway, there is an inherent sadness in the realization that he is just like everyone else. Bob sees Vanessa as trash, not as a person, and he’s determined to treat her as such. And at the end of Freeway, Vanessa is on her own, just like she’s always been, with Bob having taken away her only hope of a better, “normal” life by murdering her grandmother. And so that huge Reese Witherspoon smile and high-pitched laugh in the final frame is a tragic ending. It is Vanessa’s final surrender to the fact that there is no one left to take care of her… she is truly alone. It’s the release of hope, and the acceptance that Vanessa is now, and possibly forever, forced to be a wolf; the only way she’ll survive is to become the predator, and never again the prey. Throughout Freeway, it’s so easy to forget that Vanessa is still just a kid, a 15-year-old girl who should be worried about school work but can’t even read. She should be hanging out at malls, not avoiding prison fights. The transformation of Vanessa in Freeway shows the viewer that any chance she had at the beginning of the film for a happy life seems further away than ever. And even though Vanessa kills the Big Bad Wolf, the trauma she endures will likely haunt her for the rest of her life. And that’s how the cycle of trauma lives on, by slapping a big smile on the horrific things that have happened and moving on. Without having the support and knowledge to address trauma, which is something that doesn’t come naturally and needs both intrinsic and extrinsic awareness to accomplish, Vanessa will continue the cycle that her mother began. No smile, however big it may be, will help Vanessa heal.
Jerry Sampson (@ladyscriptwrit) is a freelance writer, horror writer, film reviewer, screenwriter and editor. She writes for Ghouls Magazine, Rue Morgue, Scream Magazine and other horror sites. Jerry’s love for film and the horror genre leads her to explore and question the darkness that lies in the shadows of human existence.