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The 1996 movie Freeway was, as far as I can tell, never much of a success. It was one of those obscure late-night channel-flipping discoveries that somehow grabbed my attention and stuck with me. Until recently, I assumed it was just a standalone oddity, but after rewatching it this week, I discovered it actually got a sequel. A legitimate sequel, too — not one of those bargain-bin cash-ins like Titanic II or Showgirls 2. Yes, both of those are real.
And that’s how I stumbled into the complete dumpster fire that is Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby.
After escaping from a juvenile detention center, teenage prostitute Crystal “White Girl” falls in with Cyclona, a volatile serial killer who has just murdered her abusive boyfriend. The two embark on a chaotic road trip through the American Southwest, pursued by police while drifting from one bizarre and violent encounter to the next. Along the way, White Girl becomes entangled in Cyclona’s increasingly reckless behavior and eventually finds herself at a religious institution run by the sinister Sister Gomez, whose true nature proves far more dangerous than it first appears.
Reese Witherspoon delivered a no-holds-barred performance in the original film and carried the movie with ease. The cast also included Kiefer Sutherland and Brooke Shields, giving it the feel of a proper studio production despite its edgy subject matter.
Freeway II, on the other hand, has to make do with Natasha Lyonne and a noticeably smaller budget. Lyonne is by no means a bad actress, but her performance never reaches the same level as Witherspoon’s. In the original, Witherspoon completely owned every scene she appeared in, bringing an energy and charisma that elevated even the film’s most outrageous moments.
The two characters have plenty in common. Both are young women living on society’s margins, trying to survive in harsh circumstances. Lyonne’s character is a prostitute who robs her clients, while Witherspoon’s Vanessa is a troubled runaway navigating a world filled with predators. Yet despite those similarities, Lyonne never manages to make her character as compelling or memorable as Witherspoon did in the first film.
The real wild card of the movie is María Celedonio as Cyclona. A lesbian serial killer obsessed with sex and murder, she occasionally gets the two mixed up, culminating in a particularly disturbing scene where she sits in bed between the bodies of an elderly couple she has murdered, covered in blood and masturbating. Pure class.
Cyclona is completely unhinged, but she’s also somehow the most interesting character in the film. For much of the runtime, Natasha Lyonne’s White Girl feels less like the protagonist and more a secondary character. It’s not until the third act that the film pushes Cyclona into the background and allows White Girl to step into the lead role.
The original movie operates in a heightened reality, but Freeway II pushes everything into overdrive. Nearly every scene is dialed up to absurd levels, such as one where White Girl’s lawyer receives sexual favors from a client right in the middle of a courthouse while having a discussion with two detectives. In theory, this kind of excess could contribute to the film’s style, but in practice it rarely works.
As a result, the tone is all over the place. This is a movie that tackles bulimia, necrophilia, pedophilia, and several other decidedly un-lighthearted subjects, yet presents them with a bizarre mix of dark comedy and camp.
Combined with the low budget and clumsy execution, the film often feels sleazy rather than provocative. It lacks the nudity, gore, or stylistic flair that might have pushed it fully into exploitation territory, but it comes uncomfortably close. Instead, it ends up stuck in an awkward middle ground: too trashy to be taken seriously, yet not outrageous enough to be entertaining on that level alone.
Where the original Freeway was loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood, Freeway II takes its inspiration from Hansel and Gretel. That connection is barely noticeable for most of the runtime, however, only becoming obvious during the film’s final moments when the antagonist, Vincent Gallo’s Sister Gomez, is shoved into an oven and suddenly starts displaying all the traits of a classic fairy-tale witch. Up until that point, the movie feels less like a twisted reimagining of Hansel and Gretel and more like a trashy, low-budget version of Thelma & Louise.
While the original film was a pleasant surprise, the sequel is a surprising disaster. It never really clicked with me and feels wildly incoherent from beginning to end. What’s perhaps most surprising is that both films were written and directed by Matthew Bright. The first movie managed to balance its dark humor, social satire, and fairy-tale influences into something genuinely entertaining. The sequel, meanwhile, feels like an unfiltered collection of bad ideas desperately searching for a story to hold them together.
Bright’s filmography is surprisingly short, consisting of only a handful of movies. After watching Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby, that fact becomes a little easier to understand.
