The Largely Forgotten Joy Ride Let Paul Walker Play A Horror Movie 'Final Guy'
By the time "The Fast and the Furious" rolled into theaters in the summer of 2001, Paul Walker was poised to become a star after appearing in smaller supporting roles as the stereotypical jock in "She's All That" and an Ivy League prep in "The Skulls." Hoping to capitalize on Walker's newfound fame after "Point Break" on wheels became an unexpected smash hit that would go on to launch The Fast Saga, the grimy road trip thriller "Joy Ride" was released to little fanfare just in time for Halloween season. Apparently, another car chase movie with Walker in the driver's seat just wasn't enough to get audiences to care.
In hindsight, "Joy Ride" has become a mini cult classic of highway horror. Following in the tire marks of Steven Spielberg's "Duel," director John Dahl took the deceptively simple premise of a killer truck driver terrorizing unsuspecting travelers and updated it for the early aughts. Doing just well enough to spawn two direct-to-video sequels, "Dead Ahead" and "Road Kill," Dahl's tightly wound genre film is far from perfect, but its mix of suspense and breakneck action sequences make it worth revisiting, especially if you're searching for sleeper hits in the vein of "Jeepers Creepers" or devilish hit-and-run throwbacks like 1977's "The Car" and "Race With the Devil" starring Peter Fonda.
Never disrespect the rules of the road
In another allusion to cross-country road movies of the past, Paul Walker's character Lewis drives a 1971 Chrysler Newport that looks like it could match up pretty well against the 1970 Dodge Challenger from "Vanishing Point." (After all, it's just not as scary to be stalked by a faceless villain in an 18-wheeler if you're driving a Honda Accord.) Lewis secretly has the hots for his longtime crush, Venna (Leelee Sobieski), whom he offers to drive back east for the holidays. Making the trek from Colorado to New Jersey, Lewis winds up taking a detour to bail his ne'er-do-well brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) out of a Salt Lake City jail. With all three of them safely back on the road, Fuller talks them into hooking up an old citizen's band radio to speak to truckers on the road.
In a classic example of the prank-gone-wrong trope, Lewis pretends to be a single woman going by the handle Candy Cane who sets up a fake date at a roadside motel with a lonely traveler named Rusty Nail (voiced by Ted Levine from "The Silence of the Lambs"). This is all a ruse to get back at a particularly obnoxious customer held up in the room next door. As Lewis and Fuller eavesdrop from the supposed safety of their adjacent room, they listen in as Rusty Nail proceeds to beat the living daylights out of the poor schlub at the other end of their practical joke.
With the setup now in place, "Joy Ride" becomes a near constant, unrelenting barrage on the senses featuring a number of ongoing high-wire action scenes of Rusty Nail's looming semi barreling down on Lewis' battered muscle car. Suddenly, they seem like the only two machines on the road racing down back country streets and tearing up cornfields as the three college kids in peril try and survive the night.
A great villain and a great director
The effectiveness of "Joy Ride" lies in the wise decision to never reveal the face of its main villain, choosing instead to highlight his crackling voice booming out of the CB speaker. John Dahl is essentially making the Mack truck a personification of the masked killer that's relentlessly tracking down its victims, who honestly might deserve what's coming to them after playing a cruel prank on a weary trucker who just happens to be a murderer. By never showing the man behind the wheel, Rusty Nail seems all-knowing and unstoppable. There are a few too many times where Rusty appears to be one step ahead of his victims, which could either be a sign of convenient writing by scribes Clay Tarver and a young J.J. Abrams, or a clue that other fellow truckers may be helping him stay in hot pursuit.
Dahl, who almost single-handedly popularized neo-noir filmmaking with "Red Rock West" and "The Last Seduction," shows so much promise with his airtight, nail-biting direction and editing here, particularly when "Joy Ride" is revving up into its final act during a riveting motel sequence. Thanks to his deft hand, "Joy Ride" takes what could have been a run-of-the-mill thriller and elevates it to an entirely other level that keeps the tension dialed up until the credits roll.
The rather predictable wrap-up is left intentionally open-ended, but Paul Walker would go on to star in a never-ending assembly line of "Fast & Furious" sequels instead of a follow-up to "Joy Ride." In his only real involvement in the horror genre, Walker at least got the chance to play that rare final guy that somehow manages to save the girl without making the ultimate sacrifice. He just had to impersonate a blonde named Candy Cane in order to do it.