Assume the Title is Ironic

Film: Joy Ride (Roadkill)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

For whatever reason, there are actors who don’t have the career they deserve. One such actor is Steve Zahn, who is frequently the best thing in the movie he is in and just as frequently is in a movie that is beneath his talent. I’ll put it out there that of our three primary actors in Joy Ride (also known as Roadkill), Zahn is better than the film. Co-star Paul Walker is exactly as good as the material, and love interest Leelee Sobieski, also known as the very poor man’s Helen Hunt, is punching above her weight.

Anyway, Joy Ride is a film that, depending on how serious you are about horror movies and thrillers, is one that you have absolutely seen at least once before. A substantial part of this movie is Duel for the Millennial generation, the main difference being that rather than happening seemingly at random, our heroes bring at least a little of what follows on themselves. There are also a number of similarities here to the original version of The Hitcher (I don’t know about the remake, since I haven’t seen it). If you want to go more obscure, there’s a lot here that is similar to the early-‘80s Aussie film Road Games.

Things start innocently enough. College student Lewis (Walker) is on his way home, planning to stop in Colorado to pick up Venna (Sobieski), a girl from his home town who he carries a bit of a torch for. As he is leaving, he is contacted by his mother and told to pick up his brother Fuller (Zahn), who has just been released from lock up in Salt Lake City. As they head from Salt Lake to Colorado, Fuller decides to play a prank on a random trucker with their CB radio. Essentially, he convinces Lewis to pretend to be a woman calling herself Candy Cane who is interested in hooking up. They target a trucker who calls himself Rusty Nail (voiced by Ted Levine and played physically by Matthew Kimbrough).

At a stop at a motel in Wyoming, Fuller has a run-in with an angry and nasty motel guest. Deciding on a little revenge, he has Lewis contact Rusty Nail again and tells him that “she” will be in Room 17 at the motel—the room of the nasty guest. Things go badly, and when they wake up the next morning, they discover that the angry guest is in a coma and has had his lower jaw ripped off. Fun!

What follows, then, is a game of cat-and-mouse as Rusty Nail follows the two brothers and eventually the two and Venna looking for revenge. Many of these moments play exactly like Duel, with the trio being chased or almost run off the road, pinned by the truck and otherwise assaulted. When they are forced to interact with Rusty Nail, things are much more along the lines of The Hitcher, albeit without a bloody finger dropped in their French fries. When Venna is eventually kidnapped (you knew that was going to happen, right?) there are more shades of The Hitcher, but more of Road Games.

And really, that is the beef with Joy Ride. This is a well-made movie, and is surprisingly smart for what comes across in large part as a very basic thriller without a whole lot of plot. That plot, though, feels incredibly derivative, and because of this, Joy Ride feels as if it is constantly trying to find its footing. Virtually everything that happens feels like it is tugging on the strings of other movies. This is a shame, because Joy Ride is genuinely a film that really good be very good if there was anything in it that felt original. Even the ending, which diverges from The Hitcher follows closely to that of Road Games.

I suppose there are only a certain number of plots, just as there only a certain number of possible combinations of notes, and plenty of songs end up sounding a lot like plenty of other songs. Joy Ride, then, ends up being a very good imitation of other movies, kind of like a really good knock-off purse. Honestly, there’s enough here that this could be more than the mash-up of remakes that it is (there may be shades of Jeepers Creepers here as well, albeit without the supernatural monster), but alas, what we have is what we have.

Why to watch Joy Ride: Steve Zahn needs more credit and more love.
Why not to watch: Everything in this that isn’t Duel is The Hitcher.