Rating: 
Summary: Develop a Phobia for Big, Black Trucks and Roadside Motels..
Review: This is a brilliantly directed and scripted, 5-star thriller. The casting of the 3 leads - Steve Zahn, Paul Walker and Leelee Sobieski is perfect as they deliver wonderful performances and share great screen chemistry.I can't remember the last time I had so much "fun" at the cinema. The suspense in "Joy Ride" is taut and heart-pounding while the laugh moments are also plentiful. The movie's about the danger that 2 brothers, Fuller (Zahn) and Lewis (Walker) get themselves into after their "seemingly" harmless prank on their car's CB radio goes horribly wrong when their "victim", a truck driver (who calls himself "Rusty Nail"), decides to get even with them. Watching this movie was great fun! Loud LAUGHS from the cinema audience during the funny scenes and SCREAMS from the female (mainly) audience during the "scary" moments testify to how effective the movie is. To me, one of the most hilarious scenes is the one where Fuller goes to the rescue of Venna (played by Sobieski) who is being harassed by a bunch of men in a motel bar. The villain, "Rusty Nail" has the scariest voice! Listening to him talk on the CB radio ("Candy Cane... I'm looking for Candy Cane...") is enough to send a chill down your spine. You'll have to watch the movie to know whether he does show his face or not in the end. This movie ends with a "delicious" twist.... to pave the way for a "Joy Ride 2", maybe? I don't know if this type of movie is termed "black comedy" but trust me, the laughs and thrills are first-rate all the way. Just fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the Joy Ride!
Rating:
Summary: A Modern "Duel" on Premium Fuel
Review: If you're in the mood for an uncommonly witty, decidedly unpredictable, savagely sardonic, and oppressively ambient adrenaline pumping suspense thriller, than look no further than Joy Ride. Starring Paul Walker (Lewis Thomas), Steve Zahn
(Fuller Thomas), Leelee Sobieski (Venna Wilcox), Jessica Bowman (Charlotte Campbell), and habitual antagonist Ted Levine (Rusty Nail), John Dahl's (Rounders, Last Seduction, Red Rock West) effervescently dynamic Joy Ride is a spaciously well performed thrill ride which weaves a thematically eloquent and morbidly psychological laced narrative that habitually leaves the viewer breathlessly craving more and hesitantly doing so. Graced with an abnormally textured and unreservedly robust cast of characters, an astoundingly effective ambiguous antagonist that harkens back to the insanely unforgettable thriller villains of the 60's and 70's, outrageously wicked erratic story twists that even contradict a hardened Thriller Fan predictions, and an expertly evasive droll wit that reinforces Joy Ride's unaccommodating manipulation of intelligent fear with an unadulterated depraved sense of humor that spikes the film's thrills with unexpected and uncomfortable laughs in typical Hitchcockian style. Joy Ride seems to have it all. Joy Ride commences by the telling the tale of Lewis Thomas's college summer break. Lewis has been platonically friends with Venna Wilcox for a while now, and after impulsively selling an airplane ticket home in exchange for an inexpensive automobile junk heap. Lewis decides to do the chivalrous thing and drive all the way to Colorado to pick Veena up from college and take her home for break. On the way there, Lewis discovers that his consistently immature older brother Fuller has been arrested in Salt Lake City, Utah, and his mother would like for him to pick him up. After picking Fuller up, Fuller purchases a CB player, as a gesture of gratitude, and begins to pull verbal pranks over the CB player. This leads them down an initially seemingly innocent trail of zestfully energetic humor that eventually stales into a fully unadulterated descent into unfathomable
details of grisly horror and indescribable anxiety. Joy Ride represents the metaphorical zenith what a thriller should deliver on a regular basis. Instead of providing the audience with overabundant gore and exceedingly outrageous cleavage and nudity, why not just tell a comprehensively sound story that amuses with ingenuity rather than excess. Charged with indulgently clever shrewdness in its presentation, Joy Ride demonstrates acutely the rather sparkling joys of suspenseful storytelling that as of late continue to be ignored
by a majority of the Hollywood establishment. As for Joy Ride's upcoming DVD release hopefully it includes a ravishing anamorphic widescreen presentation, an informative John Dahl commentary track, deleted scenes, and documentaries. We'll have to wait and see. Deliriously recommended to anyone who really enjoys a tearfully intense movie and even those who don't. Footnote: Ted Levine also played the unforgettable antagonist Jamie Gume in Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs. P.S. Never Buy Pink Champagne
Rating: 
Summary: You'll be afraid to get in your car afterwards!
Review: This movie was a fun thriller/horror type movie. I wouldn't put it on my "greatest movies ever" list, but it was an entertaining movie. Take two young men (boys?), one in college, the other, his brother who is slightly on the delinquent yet very cute and funny side, and a girl the two of them lust after, played by LeeLee Sobieski, and you have yet another movie that plays to the fans of the Scream trilogy. It had a slight "been-there-done-that" feel to it, but I still caught myself all tensed-up during the most suspenseful parts. In Scream you had a sicko calling on the phone and chasing people with a knife. In Joy Ride you have a sicko stalking three college-aged kids with a CB-radio and chasing them with a semi-truck.
Rating: 
Summary: ROAD KILL
Review: Directed by John Dahl, previously best known for Red Rock West and The Last Seduction (the movie that launched Linda Fiorentino's career), the ironically titled Joy ride is very much a homage to the seventies Spielberg movie Duel but rather than being just a cheap rip-off Joy Ride is in fact a very entertaining, genuinely scary edge of the seat ride, which proves that you don't need a big budget to make great movies. THE PLOT: The film's instantly likeable hero, Lewis, played by Paul Walker (The Fast and The Furious) a scholarship student at Berkeley, buys a battered 1971 car so he can pick up Venna (Leelee Sobieski), who he has a major crush for, from the University of Colorado and drive her to the East Coast for summer vacation. However, on the way he unexpectedly has to pick up his irresponsible older brother Fuller (the always excellent Steve Zahn) who's in a Salt Lake City jail on a drunk-and-disorderly charge. During the journey Fuller buys a cheap CB radio and involves Lewis in an unpleasant practical joke at the expense of a truck driver with the CB handle 'Rusty Nail' but they find themselves in fear for their lives when old Rusty turns out to be a psychopath who takes a violent dislike to them. From then on, they themselves become the objects of the unseen Rusty Nail's revenge. After several hair-raising encounters, they resolve not to tell Venna of their adventures when they pick her up at the clean, well-lit Colorado campus. It would be easy to criticise Joy Ride (known as Road kill in the UK). Its premise is hardly original and its reliance on a CB radio as a plot device harks back to the seventies, rather than the present day when everybody (except in this movie) has a cell phone. However, Joy Ride is actually a stunning success due to its faultless direction, which creates Hitchcock like suspense and provides many heart stopping moments. The script is excellent too combining and balancing humour and horror in equal measures, often hinting at violence that is not actually seen and providing nervous moments of humour whilst avoiding corniness. As for the three leads they are perfectly cast with Paul Walker, minus the blonde beach boy locks he sported in The Fast and the Furious, making a good fist of the part of the boy from the wrong side of the tracks in love with the girl from the right side of the tracks played by the equally impressive Leelee Sobieski (Deep Impact). Steve Zahn (Out of Sight) as the misfit brother Fuller is also excellent and he steals many of the scenes with witty one-liners but ultimately this is a movie whose strength lies in the sum of all its parts. Cheaply made it shows that its not big budgets that make great movies its talent and imagination. Here's hoping there's a sequel! Four stars, well merited. ****
Rating:
Summary: Any movie with TWO Brenda Lee songs has got to be good
Review: And this one is. John Dahl racks up another effective modern thriller. Although the story is very simple and leaves very little to the imagination, it still draws you in and entertains you enough to make you want to see it again some time. The cast is good, and, like "Jeepers Creepers", does take some time to build up the characters enough to make you care about them so that you're not left waiting for them to die (unlike most teen/young adult slasher flicks). But, what struck me the most, was the placement of not only one, but two vintage Brenda Lee songs (and not even one of them was "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree")! I'm telling you, I nearly jumped when I heard "Everybody Loves Me But You" start to play in that cornfield! I thought "only I would have thought to do that". And as if that weren't enough, shortly afterwards they played "I Wonder" in the motel room. Oh boy, I was overexcited. Early 60s Brenda Lee songs are probably my favorite pop songs of all time. There is nothing more exciting than a clever song placement in a movie. I don't know if it was John Dahl's idea or what, but someone deserves major props for that. (Oh, and I won't complain that in the movie they were being played by the villian. I'm okay with that. I'm sure Brenda didn't mind, either.) Definitely a good night's entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: bad ending
Review: This movie is pretty suspenseful, but the last thirty seconds might just be the worst ending in cinima history, or maybe rusty nail has a clone.
Rating:
Summary: I'm not your Candycane!
Review: This was one suspenseful movie! Two of my friends sat me down to watch this one, and I was very happy with it. The plot has been summarized before, so I will avoid that. This movie is very much a tale of suspense that you will keep thinking about for days. Paul Walker and Steve Zahn do really well in this film, but I'm not crazy about Leelee Sobieski. I've seen her in other films, and her acting is the same in all of them, lukewarm. The first half of the movie is really good and you can really get into it, then Leelee's character is introduced and it starts to drag. This is a good movie to watch with a bunch of friends sitting there yelling at the screen. The alternate endings are also very fabulous. Check them out if you haven't seen them yet.
Rating:
Summary: You'll be afraid to get in your car afterwards!
Review: This movie was a fun thriller/horror type movie. I wouldn't put it on my "greatest movies ever" list, but it was an entertaining movie. Take two young men (boys?), one in college, the other, his brother who is slightly on the delinquent yet very cute and funny side, and a girl the two of them lust after, played by LeeLee Sobieski, and you have yet another movie that plays to the fans of the Scream trilogy. It had a slight "been-there-done-that" feel to it, but I still caught myself all tensed-up during the most suspenseful parts. In Scream you had a sicko calling on the phone and chasing people with a knife. In Joy Ride you have a sicko stalking three college-aged kids with a CB-radio and chasing them with a semi-truck.
Rating:
Summary: Joy Ride is just plain scary
Review: We rented this movie on a whim. Didn't expect much, didn't have high expectations, were just hoping it wasn't so bad that we had to turn it off. Although, if I didn't turn off Species II while watching it, I can pretty much watch anything. So watch it we did. And we were pleasantly horrified. Joy Ride is about the all American road trip. One brother (Lewis, played by Paul Walker), on his way to pick up a potential future girlfriend (Venna, played by Leelee Sobieski) and thence homeward bound, finds out his older brother (Fuller, played by Steve Zahn) just got "into some trouble." That trouble involves jail time, apparently. But not for very long, because Lewis bails him out. On the way across the U.S., the two boys get into trouble by pretending they're women on the CB. The brothers go one step further than usual man-boy antics by inviting a lonely trucker over to the hotel room of another jerk who crossed their path. Hilarity ensues. Okay, actually, the pissed off trucker, angry that he's not getting laid by "Candycane" rips off the other man's jaw in a rage. He gets points for creativity. The above summary does not do the movie justice. There's great tension, slow camera pans, and moments of building suspsense -- one of them just focusing on an odd picture on a wall. But we're listening to what's going on BEHIND the wall. Joy Ride is about anonymity. I relate to the issue because my Master's thesis was about just that: what you do when you're anonymous. It can be empowering when you're the anonymous one, or terrifying when someone anonymous stalks you. And that's exactly what happens in Joy Ride. Joy Ride has its flaws. The brothers, Fuller specifically, borders on being an unlikable jerk that you begin to hope gets killed. But the characters redeem themselves by acting like real people. They freak out, call the police, run screaming, shout for management -- they do everything *I* would do if I was being stalked by a 300 lb., 6-foot tall sexually repressed trucker. It's the actions that get them in trouble when you lose sympathy for them...until you realize just how horrible the angry trucker is. Poor Leelee is supposed to be the eyecandy in the film (or, as the trucker puts it, the Candycane in this film). She's cute, but she's far too intelligent -- in her manner and her appearance -- to come off as the doe-eyed victim. Her role doesn't even require that much acting (for most of the film, she's drunk). Nevertheless, Joy Ride is just plain scary. If you've ever been afraid of being stranded on the road, if you've ever been one of those little [disagreeable persons] who taunted truckers on CBs (I was one, sadly), and if you've listened to the hotel room next door wondering if people are making out or killing each other...you'll like this horror film.
Rating:
Summary: ROADKILL
Review: For some reason when the movie was released here (australia) it had a name change to ROADKILL! why I dont know? apart from the opeining credit for 2 seconds that says ROADKILL theres no diffence bewteen the 2 editions! When first seeing this film i was expecting a cheesy teen horror flick, but suprsingly it was pretty good! and had one of those ending that leaves you thinkign about what just happend? The bonues features are great, its packed full with a few alternate scenes and trailers, and a voice over to see who did the best "rusty nail" voice..but the best is seeing the alternate ending which runs for just over half an hour! and comletly makes the movie a totally diffrent thing all together!!! this DVD is worth buying, but you might want to rent it first if you can and judge it for yourself!
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