First, let me say that this wasn't nearly as bad as Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trickbaby. Like Freeway 2, this is also a subversive modern-day fairy tale.
Vanessa Lutz (Reese Witherspoon) is an illiterate 15 year old. Her mother (Amanda Plummer) is a prostitute, and her step father (Michael T. Weiss, the guy from Pretender) is a child-molesting crackhead. Well, Vanessa's mom gets busted for whoring, and she and the stepdad are arrested. Vanessa's all alone, and she refuses to go to another foster home. Instead, she decides to go live with her grandma. Taking only the red coat on her back and the basket in her hand, she drives off. But before she leaves town, she has to say good-bye to her boyfriend, Chopper. He gives her a gun to sell if she needs money, and she leaves. Then a bunch of street thugs come by and gun Chopper down.
So, Vaness's driving along the freeway, and her car dies. Someone pulls over to give her a hand. He's a therapist named Bob Wolverton, and he offers her a ride in his nice new SUV. She opens up to him, tells him stuff that one would normally tell a therapist, and begins to trust him. Well, wouldn't you know, it turns out Bob Wolverton is really the serial rapist that's been preying on women up and down the freeway. If you haven't figured it out by now, the story we're dealing with here is Little Red Riding Hood, and something just occurred to me. In an Episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, they did a Little Red Riding Hood sketch with John Cleese in the title role. Instead of a wolf, though, she was stalked by Heinz, the nearsighted rapist. I wonder if that was intentional.
Anyway, back to the story, Vanessa learns of his plans to violate her before (and after) he kills her, and she has a few problems with that, so she shoots him several times, leaving him for dead.
Well, Bob survives, and he's pressing charges. It's his word against her's, and who do you think is more likely to be believed, the respected therapist or the whore's daughter with the criminal record? Vanessa gets arrested and put into a high security juvenile correction center whose warden is an overly friendly passive-aggressive woman who see no hope for Vanessa's future and thinks she should be tried as an adult. Meanwhile, Vanessa's planning her escape after making a knife out of a toothbrush. For some reason, Vanessa and a group of girls are going somewhere in the prison van. They make a pit stop to use the restroom, and one of the prisoners kills the warden. Vanessa slashes the armed guard with the makeshift knife, and they all escape.
So, Vanessa's off to go live with Grandma, and the cops are starting to think that Bob may be the killer/rapist, so they get a search warrant and find a bunch of kiddie porn. Bob's wife (Brooke Shields) kills herself, and Bob goes after Vanessa. The cops go after Bob.
Vanessa finally arrives at grandma's house, and grandma's in bed, only it's not really Grandma. Grandma's dead. Bob killed her. Bob also wants to kill Vanessa, but she strangles him instead. Oh, and the cops figure out that Bob was the bad guy.
Like I said, it wasn't as bad as its sequel, but it wasn't great either. I do, however, like the idea of the subversive fairy tales, and I would see more.