In 2001, Clay Tarver and J.J. Abrams teamed up with John Dahl to invent a monumental horror flick. Starring Steve Zahn, Paul Walker, and the beautiful Leelee Sobieski, Joy Ride took off, and set itself as one of the last amazing horror movies to be made. Unfortunately, every horror movie has a potential sequel. Joy Ride was no different. In 2008, Bats director Louis Morneau teamed up with James Robert Johnston and Bennett Yellin to bring Rusty Nail, our antagonizing trucker back to life.

There are many things I can say about this movie that I say about a lot of other horror movies. Fortunately for Morneau and crew, it would not be that this one is a waste of time, although I can’t say the movie was much more than mediocre. The script was well done, and the cinematography was far from disappointing. The direction itself was amazing with the budget that the crew was given. However, these things are only the foundation of a movie; the real test is in the execution.

Nicki Aycox picks up the role of Melissa, a young woman thrown into a horrible situation after her fiancé, Bobby (played by Nick Zano) is kidnapped by trucker Rusty Nail (portrayed by Mark Gibbon). Together, Melissa, her sister Kayla (Laura Jordan) and Kayla’s MySpace lover Nik (Kyle Schmid) must complete objectives given by the seemingly omnipotent trucker in hopes of saving Bobby.

The story pans out really nice, flowing smoothly and keeping the attention of the viewer. However, fans of the horror genre in general will find themselves staring down clichés from numerous other films, and will be guessing the progression of the story with ease about the time the one hour mark rolls around. As I said, the story is good, however, Johnston and Yellin went way off course with this movie. Where the majority of Joy Ride (Roadkill in some countries) took place with full speed, adrenaline-inducing car chase scenes, its sequel moves slower, and the only scene that catches the predecessor’s feel is incredibly short.

The character development in the film is good in some aspects. We begin to see an evil side to Melissa as the story unfolds, and our bad boy Nik begins to crumble near the end of the film. Unfortunately, for fans of Joy Ride, Rusty Nail has changed. There are scenes where he goes as far as torturing two of our main characters, where in the previous film, he had a Lecterian character about him, making it all a game. This literally killed the movie for me, and is bad on our script writers, who should have taken the mentality of our antagonist into mind when thinking of scenes like this.

Overall, Joy Ride 2 is a film worth watching on a rainy day. The casting was superb, the story itself unfolded well and was easy to watch, and the cinematography was up there with some of the better movies of this decade. Unfortunately, its lack of closure and character development stunts what could possibly be an unbelievable film. This movie isn’t a waste of time, but I’d suggest saving it for a rainy day.

The Verdict:

5/10