Joy Ride 3: Road Kill

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source: Joy Ride 3: Road Kill

Joyride 3 is not good. Don't misunderstand anything in this review that implies that. In fact, at the half-way mark I almost turned it off but I'm happy to say that the latter half of the movie almost makes it worthwhile. The original Joyride is a modern day horror classic. It did nearly everything right and had the fortunate luck of the charisma of its two stars. I haven't even seen the second Joyride and I don't really intend on it. Both the second and the third are sheer money grabs on the franchise, no more and no less. They don't even try to make it a worthwhile story. The characters are borderline awful and the entire film exists for no other reason than to flex their gore muscles and kill off hapless victims. In that respect, the film works and works pretty well. The kills are actually unique, over the top, and horror worthy. Its reminiscent of the ridiculous yet guilty pleasure series Wrong Turn. It was sort of nice to have "Rusty Nail" the original killer return but he isn't even remotely the same as he was. Whereas in the original he was dark, mysterious, quiet and killed from the shadows in number 3 he is over the top, in your face and anything but mysterious. Honestly, I don't know whether the problem with this cast is they are poor actors or if the script simply gives them nothing in the way of character development. It is likely somewhere in the middle. Kirsten Prout, Ben Hollingsworth and Dean Armstrong are the characters you'll see the most of but no one stands out and the chemistry is severely lacking. Hollingsworth doesn't hold a candle to Paul Walker from the original and he does have one or two decent scenes where he performs adequately but the script which only wants Rusty Nail to dismember and kill prevents him from doing anything significant with the role. Everyone else...literally...is forgettable. I wasn't even sure most of their names and they existed strictly as victims. Ken Kirzinger gives the best performance in the movie (that's not saying much but he does) as our killer "Rusty Nail." He's no stranger to horror and he is a legendary stunt co-coordinator. The problem is the character is written so empty and you just don't care enough about him as a villain or any of the victims either. I literally laughed out loud when I looked and saw who our writer and director is. Now all of this makes sense. Why anyone would hand the reigns over to a director and writer with such little experience and he has single handedly taken the reigns of the Wrong Turn series which has become ridiculous (although an absolutely insanely fun guilty little pleasure.) He has no handle on what the original film stood for with horror fans and this could have been any new horror flick and not held the Joyride name (although haphazardly Rusty Nail mentions "Candy Cane"...a nod to Walker's CB handle from the original. The reason I score this a solid six is because the film ends up being campy and entertaining and the big battle at the end is actually well shot with good special effects and definitely follows the tried and true recipe of a slasher movie. So in that regard it succeeds but just barely. If you even try to hold in the same regard as the original, you'll hate it. So take it as it is, a cheesy, slapped together, acceptable torture-horror film. 6/10

A group of young car racing enthusiasts are on their way to enter their car into a race in Canada, and after stopping for a bite to eat and to ask for some directions, they decide to take a route that is known as Slaughter Alley (after being warned not to, of course). It's here that one of the racers decides to toy about with a truck driver, but that, as they soon find out, was a mistake. What was supposed to be a non-eventful road trip has now turned into a deadly cat-and-mouse game for survival. This will be a pretty short review because in all honesty there isn't much to write about Joy Ride 3. The first film was a good, tense thriller with a good cast. Joy Ride 2 wasn't a patch on the first movie but it was still a watchable film. This one however, well, let's just be polite and say it's gone to the opposite end of Joy Ride. There is plenty of gore but not much of a storyline, so at least the splatter fans might get something out of the movie. There's the usual casting of stereotypical characters as well....street racer jock types along with their stick insect scream queen girlfriends, and of course the now indestructible serial killer, Rusty Nail. This only JUST made it into a 3-star rating for me purely because some of the scenes are not too bad. Well, that and I never lost the will to live while watching the movie. It's watchable but only just barely.

I enjoyed the first Joyride which was full of tension and very well done. Unfortunately as we already know the perpetrator this one does away with the tension to instead concentrate more on gore. A group of boy racers and assorted girlfriends pick on the wrong lorry to mess with and pay the price. It's all fairly predictable stuff but there are one or two good scenes i.e the opening death scene to keep you interested. At times it is extremely gory with some SAW like scenes which I'm not sure add a great deal to the movie. The acting is what you'd expect, by no means bad but not great either. Overall as long as you don't have high expectations this is an OK time filler but I doubt it's one that will live long in the memory.

A couple doing drugs in a motel run out of drugs and money. They decide to lure a trucker to their room and then take his drugs or money. Unfortunately for them the trucker who answers is Rusty Nail. He's got plans for them. He chains them to his truck, tapes drugs to his windshield. If they hang on while he drives for a mile, they get the drugs. They survive the mile. But the girl gets to eager for the drugs and reaches for them. That pulls the chain into the truck's U-joint and they yanked under the truck and run over. So far so good. Next we meet a bunch of rejects from an Asylum casting call for extras. They're supposed to be a racing team. They're on their way to Canada for a race. There's 6 of them, 2 girls and 4 guys, in 2 cars, an SUV with a bed and some little race car. They stop at a diner, discover on a map a shorter route and ask some trucker about the road. It's called slaughter alley because people tend to die there. The crazy trucker warns them to stay away. A cop arrives tells them it's just fine. So they take that road. The guy who says he's the mechanic is eager to drive the car. When the driver lets him, he becomes aggressive and irresponsible. He cuts a trucker off. Yup, it's Rusty Nail. Now it's getting dark off course and Rusty has got to take revenge on the kids, kidnapping some and killing those he gets his hands on. Eventually he gets the girlfriend of the driver and tries to exchange her for the car first and then for the guy. The cops get involved as well, but Rusty is always a step ahead. Joy Ride 3 offers some thrills, some gore, a bit of nudity, some good country music. Leela Savasta is very cute but doesn't get much to do. Kirzinger is a good villain, but unfortunately the dialogue overall is very weak. The least you can do is give your villain some cool lines. This movie tries to be too serious while it lacks the scares or tension or even a strong lead as the kids are entirely disposable. They should have gone for something more tongue-in-cheek given the weaknesses. Like many horror movies this one too, would have been better had they filmed everything during day light. Overall, Joy Ride 3 is a decent sequel, it doesn't stand out, it's not terrible nor particularly good. O'Brien is a better director than he is a writer and producers should keep that in mind and hire a writer for his future projects.

I was hoping that this film would at least try to emulate the suspense of first Joy Ride movie but alas it is by the numbers gore fest about a psychotic trucker killing anyone whom he perceives has wronged him in some way or other. Whilst there were sparks of promise ultimately the movie lacks an interesting plot and story and relies on gore and blood spattering to carry it through. And it doesn't work. In a nutshell this movie is about a bunch of friends and members of a car racing team going to Canada for a race. One of the team members overtakes a truck and sends gravel onto the truck bonnet and front grill. In the truckers book this is an automatic death sentence and he goes on a killing spree eliminating the group members in highly implausible ways. That's about it. The movie starts to drag on once you realize there is hardly any suspense. Another problem is that in the first Joy Ride film, the trucker was a menacing presence and a person who felt wronged and was seeking revenge however misguided. In this film the trucker is just psychopathic and just wants to kill. The fact that the psycho trucker is able to overtake a race car is also doubtful to say the least. The actions of the main characters are also implausible. They basically avoid asking for police assistance for the dumbest of reasons: that they are afraid of going to jail... Completely unreasonable given the context. The acting is basically OK for a bunch of unknown actors and the effects are decent enough for a low budget movie, but overall this is a mostly forgettable movie that doesn't have much to offer in terms of suspense or a story line.

i give a 6 to this one, cos they are not much horror road movies, but i give the first one a big 8, cos it was a pretty decent acting and cast. even if i prefer one film over this trilogy, which is the hitcher revisited by mickael bay , i'll give a 4,5 for the second film of this franchise. like final destination saga , or screams, some are better , some are at the bottom of the list, but of the 3 films, this one is second for me in quality. the intro is the best of all three by the way, wotrh watching if u like and love horror road movies. which are unfortunalty not very present these days. but it's a nice sage after all, and i hope a fourth one would renew the genre with some new twist . cos they are some uncohenrencies from the last scene of the second film to this one about the villain... maybe it's time for rusty nail to be replaced by another character

The original Joyride is one of my favorite horror films/thrillers: lots of tension and though it was a little derivative of The Hitcher and Duel, it had enough originality to keep you guessing as to what happens next. It also had better actors playing more likable characters than the teenage clichés presented here. It also relied mostly on suspense rather than the gratuitous gore thrown in here. I watched the first sequel (even though it was a direct-to-video) and it was pretty bad, but this one is terrible. Rusty Nail is no longer mysterious; he's on full view here and is thus just another slasher killing for no reason (other than being cut off in traffic by one of the characters). In the first film he was genuinely humiliated. But being cut off on the highway doesn't seem like much of a reason to go on a torturing, killing rampage, building elaborate contraptions as part of his revenge. Most people just flip the bird when cut off on the roadway. Time to put the brakes on this series.

This movie sucked ass!!! The acting was horrible and there were so many flaws. That girl(jewel, I think was her name in the movie) could have totally out ran that semi truck and not have gotten kidnapped! I was really hoping the blonde girl would live in the end, but no she gets tied to the top of the truck and is splattered by running into the bridge!!!! That's where I turned off the movie, I did not watch passed that part!! There are so many other things that could have been done in the movie to prevent a bad thing from happening!! When the main character(forgot his name, blond girls boyfriend)found the video of his girlfriend screaming in the car trunk, how did the truck driver get back in his truck without him or the other girl (brunette, only other girl in the movie, with the main characters) seeing him get up, after she ran him over with the Subaru, and get back up in his truck? THIS MOVIE SUCKS Don't WATCH IT!!!! IT PISSSED ME OFF WHEN RUSTY NAIL(truck drivers name forgot to mention that earlier) KILLED THE BLOND GIRL LIKE THAT!!!