Roadkill (Joy Ride)

Genuinely creepy and immensely enjoyable teen horror flick

Generally overlooked at the time for seemingly being a generic teenagers-in-trouble slasher flick. Roadkill (or Joy Ride for our U.S. viewers) is actually a tight, intelligent little thriller.

Although it uses the well-worn teen-horror cliche of "unseen psycho chases a trio of good-looking youngsters", Roadkill has enough tension and shocks to recommend it.

Steve Zahn & Paul Walker play brothers on a road trip to pick up a female friend. Along the way Zahn decides to install a CB radio in their car to have a little fun with the local truckers. When a trucker called "Rusty Nail" appears over the CB, Zahn convinces his brother to pretend he is a gorgeous female with the monkier "Candy Cane". When they set up a trick meeting with the trucker (fooling him into turning up at the front door of an obnoxious hotel resident) their joke backfires and the teenagers find themselves driving for their lives.

Judging by the poster and trailer this at first seems to be a Duel rip off. In actual fact there is precious little car chasing. The best of the suspense comes in the opening half hour when Rusty Nail's creepy voice takes on an altogether more nasty tone. The scene where the two brothers are listening in to Rusty's meeting with "Candy" is a model of suspense, the camera focusing in on a painting on the hotel wall as we hear the gasp of the unsuspecting resident next door (we find out later he was having his jaw ripped off!)

Unlike many teen slasher flicks, Roadkill is pleasing in that the heroes aren't being chased after by a ghoul who simply likes to kill young people. The fact that they actually brought this on themselves by playing a joke on the wrong kind of trucker adds a level of despair to the proceedings and a feeling that karma may have caught up with them. A particularly nasty form of karma to be sure!

The film eventually takes a wrong turn halfway through when, with the killer seemingly letting them go, the brothers pick up their female object of desire and the movie begins to turn into a teen soap opera. When Walker's brother starts to hit on his girl, things take a turn for the worse for Walker and the audience.

Once the filmmakers decide we've seen enough "character building", good old Rusty Nail makes another appearance, apparently he was only getting warmed up in his hunt for teenage blood.

The stand out scene must be the sequence in a cornfield. Here, the truck comes to a standstill, eerily using its lights to probe the field hunting for the trio hiding amongst the corn rows. Personally I always thought it would be easy to outrun a truck, you just keep turning back on yourself right?

Written by the currently piping hit J.J. Abrams (he of Alias and Lost fame and currently basking in the glow of the (overrated) Star Trek remake), this underrated teen horror movie has enough decent characterisation and genuine tension to recommend when you're searching for some Saturday night popcorn fodder.