The movie was like a Freddy or Jason film. You know who the killer is, who is going to die and why they are going to die. The film starts out with a girl, Mary Black being abducted while out in the woods skipping rope and playing with her kitty, Shining. Don't worry, if you miss this scene they will show it 3-4 more times. She manages to get out very loud screams even though the killer has his hand over her mouth.We flash ahead 1 year later, Christmas Eve at a small town police department. Detective Alexander Black was the father of Mary and is having some family problems mainly over the death of Mary a year ago. Then at 8:14 Val Kilmer shows up as "Mr. Nobody" to confess to murders. Val has the eerie appearance of an old fat Jim Morrison and recites various dark lines and truisms such as "It is the job of the police to protect the rich and persecute the poor." He also has his own music as he whistles Mozart, which sounds a little like the opening of "Lassie" for you old timers.The soundtrack is a combination of Mozart and Metal. It was good, but it really had an opportunity to make the film. We soon find out that the cops who are on duty had clubbed a drifter into a coma attempting to get him to confess to the killing of Mary Black. They show the torture scene about 6 times. The drifter (never called The Traveler, perhaps "Drifter" was already taken) was beaten with a shovel, baton, fist, hung, whipped, and suffocated. Oh yes and stuck with a pen.Our Traveler is here to get revenge in a strange and supernatural way, which the police quickly figure out. As he confesses to a killing, he is actually describing how a police officer is being killed.I found the movie to be "Twilight Zone-like" at times, and Kilmer, attempting to be the new thinking man's Freddy. His slow monotone speeches are reminiscent of his Morrison readings. I saw this as a film version of dark poetry with cult status potential.No sex. No nudity. Does contain blood, guts and torture.

I knew this movie wasn't going to be good, but with Val Kilmer starring, I expected at least bad. Visually, this movie has no special effects, no slick camera work, nothing conceptually interesting. I thought it was made for TV and even if it were, I would expect more. From the very start, the scenes you have seen before. You cannot ignore the little girl's overly applied heavy mascara, and her voice has no drama whatsoever. Now, as the plot thickens and you begin to learn the abilities of this guy, he appears and disappears in scenes like a Bewitched series scene. There is no magic, special transition, or drama applied beyond the actors reactions who see him. Secondly, this happened in at least two scenes, when you find someone hanging by their neck or appears to have suffered some kind of mortal event, the first thing you do is check to see if they are still alive like check their pulse. In this movie they save time, one look and no the guy is dead, let's move on. So at the end, are we supposed to like any of these people at all? The most seemingly moral character (the desk clerk who protested their torturing) should have gotten killed last but he was the second one to go. I don't get it. The character build was actually really good, you learn a bit about each cop and what they do, who they are,... ruined by the shoddy camera and plot. The movie could have been much more with that as a start. The little girl? You really don't get to know her at all and she just reminds me of Heather O'Rourke from Poltergeist. The real torture was waiting for something fantastic to happen and a big finale, but ended up just begging for the credits to finish. The transformations at the end again, there is no transition just fading away. Stupid. Bottom line, there is no magic going on visually, nothing stimulating to heighten your fears and get you in the center of what is going on. Really I didn't even find Val Kilmer that creepy except for his long hair.

A nameless drifter (Val Kilmer) ambles into a police department in the middle of the night to tell the night watchman that he has killed six people. Arrested and booked, the drifter tells Detective Black (Dylan Neal) that the murders haven't happened yet. The six police officers quickly find that the man in their captivity is describing what will happen to them throughout the night.Val Kilmer's newest straight-to-video offering is a clever, definitely creepy idea that never quite connects with the themes it tries to make or the audience is tries to draw. Kilmer has staked his claim with low-budget action, now he tries his hand at horror. He's just short of what could have been a royal flush."The Traveler" has some aspects in its favor. Kilmer ably performs the mysterious stranger, though his performance seems to unravel as the film draws to a close. John Cassini and Chris Gauthier play two of the potential victims and come close to being memorable. The latter especially does his best with what he has and makes a sympathetic performance. Though no one matches Dylan Neal, who is the strongest of the cast as the detective with something to hide."The Traveler" is also not without its faults. Clichéd, hackneyed characters do little to make the film better. As the film continues on, it faces problems with continuity and elaboration on exactly who the stranger is. The biggest downturn is the script, which offers fewer and fewer answers to the questions it asks and doesn't seem interested in answering any of them by the end, leaving me a puzzled viewer.I give it a well-deserved five out of ten stars. It's a solid effort and worth a watch if you want a film that both makes you think and turns your brain off.

Netflix has this way of making you watch things you would never ever watch any other time. However, The Traveler did look like it might have some promise. Its true Val Kilmer doesn't exactly have a star studded career in the last...decade...and that's being generous but the film looked like it had a creepy isolated stranger feel to it and I enjoy that. Its sort of a Stephen King concept but not brilliant. Its poorly slapped together, the cast is sub par and the film starts to fall apart when it should have been climaxing. The premise is almost captivating...the stranger who comes in and confesses to six murders and as he tells the story of the murders, the murders happen around them, to the members in the precinct. Then the story becomes a supernatural ghost story not unlike a certain western I once watched, called High Plains Drifter...but comparing those two movies is like comparing...well a great movie to crap. Had they spent more time, casted better and just generally had a better film making crew this could have been something but instead it was barely B-Movie.Val Kilmer...once an eighties and sorta nineties star has practically dropped off the Hollywood radar. He always kind of had a certain intensity about him but his role as the stranger in this film and he makes the role laughable and that really hurts the film. He overacts, looks silly and the performance falls apart. Character actor Dylan Neal actually gives a solid and strong performance as the head of the precinct. He gets a strong back story to his character and really carries the film giving it any of its credibility. The rest of the cast are all basically fodder and filler. No one really stands out but everyone gets some basic personalities to their various characters. I could go through the list of supporting casts but honestly...none of them stand out whatsoever.I was a little surprised to discover Michael Oblowitz is not new to directing. In fact the South African director has a dozen titles to his name and some of them quite well respected. But the directing isn't the biggest issue to the film. There is a certain style to the overall film and while some IMDb reviewers complain about the gore, it is at the heart of it all a horror movie and the over the top blood splattering gore is the only thing that might enable this film to find a foot hole with horror fans. This one is a road bump in what had some potential but unless you're in need of a bad B-Movie romp...skip this one with something just better. 6/10