Joy Ride

One ride you should not miss!
I'm happy to report that Joy Ride is NOT just another teen slasher movie, nor is it a Scream clone, instead, it is one of the better thriller/horror film that came out of Hollywood recently. The Thomas brothers while traveling towards New Jersey decided to pull a prank on a stranger by using a CB radio, posing as a female they agreed to a midnight rendezvous with a trucker who calls himself 'Rusty Nail.' Hoping to get a good laugh, the brothers found instead that the joke is on them as they flees from the psychotic stranger out for revenge.

What makes Joy Ride scary is its believability, this kind of thing can actually happen, probably not to the extreme as portrayed in the film, but people do play jokes on each other constantly, and some do get carried away. Composed of a relatively young cast, Steve Zahn (Fuller Thomas,) Paul Walker (Lewis Thomas) and Leelee Sobieski (Venna) did a good job keeping the audiences attention glued to the screen, the pacing was actually well done...

"Duel" For The Millenium
In "Joy Ride", the Director John Dahl (Last Seduction, Red Rock West, Rounders)pounds you right from the beginning and never lets up.

It's "Duel" updated for the millenium and for a contemporary audience.

Two brothers, Paul Walker (Fast and The Furious) and Steve Zahn (Shattered Glass) take a road trip to pick up Walker's college girlfriend (Leelee Sobieski).

Using a CB radio, they play a practical joke on a trucker who turns out to be the biggest movie big rig psycho since Rutger Hauer planted a finger in C.Thomas Howell's french fries.

What the trucker, whose CB handle is "Rusty Nail" does to exact revenge keeps the audience on edge for the film's 97 minutes.

(Note: one of the sequences in the chillingly directed and edited climax cribs gleefully from "Silence of the Lambs")

Dahl pulls of the the difficult challenge of blending scares with a few laughs with little effort..he's a wildly talented director with a taste...

For Good Creepy Fun Give Joy Ride a Try
I am surprised at some of the negative reviews posted here?! I guess some of these folks thought they were taking home "Hamlet" and got "Joy Ride" by mistake??? Sure there isn't much character development, sure you may have seen this premise before, and yes "Joy Ride" is a B-Movie.....and it's a great one! I don't know what more you could ask for with a movie like "Joy Ride", it gave me plenty of chills, and had me really rooting for the two brothers who get on the wrong side of a homicidal truck driver. "Joy Ride" may resemble "Duel", "Breakdown", "Highwaymen" or any one of a hundred thriller "road" movies, but the story is definately edge-of-your-seat fun, and worth adding to your collection if you are a horror fan. Within the first 10 minutes you get sucked into this thriller and it does not let go. Ted Levine is perfect as Rusty Nail (you forget how menacing he can be after watching him as Stottlemeyer on "Monk"), and if Levine's voice oozing through the cb radio doesn't give you...

Click to Editorial Reviews