You know the story.
The slow-moving van. No windows. Just pure menace on four wheels.
The Man in the White Van takes one of the oldest suburban legends—the kind most people outgrow—and stretches it into a tense, quiet thriller based on actual events. There are no jump scares, no masked killers. Just dread. A Florida town. And a girl who knows something’s wrong long before anyone believes her.
This one doesn’t sprint. It creeps.
And if you’re not paying attention, you won’t notice it’s parked outside your house until it’s already too late.
Spoilers Below
If you’re still the kind of person who checks the rearview mirror every time a white van pulls up behind you… this review’s for you.
The Man in the White Van opens with a chilling message. The year is 1970, and we see a woman walking to her car and take off, as a white van slowly follows in pursuit. Pulling over for only a moment, before you can yell “lock your doors,” she’s gone in an instant—proving that this van isn’t content to just lure you inside. The man in this van takes what he wants.
The story picks up in Florida in 1975 with Annie, a teenage girl who doesn’t fit into her mother’s idea of “proper.” Annie is the type to say what she thinks, and would rather spend her time riding horses than doing the same things as her older sister Margaret.
Along with being different from her sister, Annie also has a tendency to embellish the truth—often just enough that no one really believes her when it matters. Which becomes a problem. Because someone’s watching her.
The van—the same one we’ve seen lurking around since the opening—starts showing up in Annie’s life. First at the gas station. Then at school. Then parked outside her house. Annie knows something’s wrong. But her parents don’t buy it. Her sister just thinks she’s being dramatic. And nearly everyone else? Completely useless.
Between flashes of other years—other girls—and the slow unraveling of Annie’s day-to-day life, the tension builds to something less like a teenage fantasy and more like the icy hand of death slowly tightening the noose. And as Annie starts to figure out the van isn’t going away, the people around her start realizing she might not be making it up after all.
From there, things escalate. The van gets closer. The watching gets bolder. And Annie ends up fighting for far more than just recognition.
What starts as small-town paranoia becomes something real. It’s not a story. It’s not in her head. It’s just waiting for the right moment to strike.
And when it does? Annie and those around her will learn that sometimes that vehicle behind you, really is following you.
The Man in the White Van is a very loose adaptation of the true story of serial killer Billy Mansfield Jr., who was discovered to have been active in Florida in the mid-’70s.
Despite being based on a true story, this film is very sparse on any real details.
The film tries to build suspense at times—having Annie stalked by this mysterious white van—but for a movie about a killer, it really does feel more like Attack of the Slowly Creeping Van. It shows up. It watches her. It doesn’t do much else for a while.
In the flashbacks inserted throughout the film, we see the killer abduct his victims with brutal efficiency. But with Annie, suddenly he’s content to take days. Slowly stalking. Constantly watching. This aspect of the slow burn does work well to build tension. But these moments are often undermined by too many fake-outs. Why build suspense only to immediately let the air out?
Still, the tension continues to rise. The killer gets bolder. The van gets closer. And even when the momentum falters, the film finds its footing again.
Where The Man in the White Van spends its time—and wisely so—is building Annie’s character. She’s an outsider in her own home, different from her family, uninterested in conforming. Through that lens, the story roots us in her perspective. A girl being watched by something no one else believes is real. That quiet fear is the heart of this film.
Ali Larter and Sean Astin, on the other hand, bring very little to the overall story outside of falling into the standard “don’t believe your kid” parental stereotypes. They’re here. They add weight. But they’re not doing much heavy lifting.
So yes—it takes its time. The story stumbles and walks more than it sprints, shambling along like a slow-moving killer. But when the burn finally comes to a boil, the tension is palpable. You feel Annie fighting for her life.
The problem is… the killer isn’t exactly terrifying. Even with all the dread and build-up, he comes off surprisingly inept. It’s hard to fear someone who gets taken down that easily.
Despite this, when Annie’s life is truly on the line, the film pays off. Slowly. But enough. We care about her because we’ve been walking beside her the whole time. And while Margaret spends most of the film being easy to hate, once the sisters are locked in a battle for survival, that dynamic shifts in the right way.
When the horror shows up, though, it still hits lite. You’re bracing for something brutal—it’s been building to it—but when it arrives, it’s underwhelming. Mostly because the end sequence resolves faster than it should’ve. And the killer? He literally just stands in the path of a moving vehicle.
And don’t even get me started on the police response time. That might have been the most unrealistic part of the whole movie. It felt like the cop showed up seconds after someone picked up the phone.
The ending tries to tie things into what’s actually known about the real-life case—showing one of Mansfield’s documented victims, and the raid on his property during the credits. That part hits.
But for a movie about a serial killer? It feels lite. A slow burn that simmers for most of its runtime, finally starts to boil—and then immediately shuts the stove off.
This silent stalker on wheels creeps onto DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital September 29th, from Kaleidoscope Entertainment.
