Joy Ride 2 : Dead Ahead [DVD]

By Clint Morris

‘’Joy Ride’’ was such a fun film – a nail-biting teen thriller with some genuinely unnerving scares and one heck of a villain.

Bad guy Rusty Nail, a twisted truck-driver with a penchant for terrorizing road-tripping youngsters, is back. Unfortunately the fun didn’t come with him.

“Cheap and Nasty” is a term my late grandmother used to use a lot. I’d imagine she’d use it again if forced to sit through this horrendous excuse for a sequel.

Twentieth Century Fox seemingly spent about ten bucks on this ridiculous sequel – and that tenner was supposed to cover equipment (so someone used a worn 1970s handy cam), talent (I take it all the kids, bar the lass from ‘’Jeepers Creepers 2’’, were fresh from a juvi drama class?), and script. Seems writers James Robert Johnston and Bennett Yellin found management half-way through penning the script, and were advised it was a dud deal, so handed in what they had – something encompassing a story that didn’t so much resemble John Dahl’s original movie, but a D-grade Saw rip-off.

Or maybe the producers just knew a guy who was friends with a guy whose cousin’s wife’s aunty could get cheap blood for film productions so decided they’d be better off making something icky and sticky, like “Saw”, than something straight-up suspenseful or thrilling like, er, the film this is supposedly allied to!

Original 2001 film told of three youngsters who decide to fool around with a trucker on their car C.B radio. Unfortunately, trucker doesn’t take too kindly to their prank and hunts them down.

The sequel sees a new bunch of young and dumb kids – – rubbing ‘Rusty Nail’ up the wrong way. This time they don’t so much as prank him on a C.B radio as they do steal his car from his barn! (And, I tell ya, if these kids stole my car from my house I’d be picturing their heads on sticks too!). He, of course, finds them.

In between people’s fingers being chopped off, there’s a road-thriller in here. At least that’s what the DVD sleeve tells us. I’m still looking.

An absolute shocker.

Extras

Not that I personally got that far – but it reportedly includes a couple of featurettes (one being a making-of, another on the ‘make up’) and a storyboard-to-scene comparison thing.