Keeping the violence — and the villain — mainly in the shadows, the filmmakers build to a climax that’s frustratingly dumb and drawn-out.

"Like so many average thrillers, ‘The Man in the White Van’ commits more to narrative structure than a singular message that will keep audiences thinking after the fact."

Neither true crime, nor true horror, the film ends up splitting the difference, with unsatisfying results.

The tension builds not through gore (the film’s PG-13 rating keeps explicit violence off-screen) but through slow roll of a van’s tires on gravel, a distant engine humming at dusk, and an expansive field that suddenly seems too exposed.