Well, I've watched a lot of Christmas movies recently and so I figure I'd change it up. I felt like watching a throwback and so I thought about 'Joy Ride'. I grew up watching a ton of horror movies but, this movie was always etched in my brain for some reason. The movie just came out at the perfect time in my life and of course it was pretty good. Instantly teleports me back in time. 'Joy Ride' may not be considered horror to some people but, it's close enough to me.
The suspenseful ones always get me. A good suspenseful movie can be so good I can barely watch them at all. I guess any non-comedy should have suspense in it too an extent. I dunno. Still, Joy Ride excels at suspense in every way. The phone calls, the motel scenes, car chases, cornfield scenes, they were all top notch, clean suspenseful scenes. Loved it. Of course, the whole CB radio aspect of the movie was just a thrilling, pretty original bit of flavor that took this movie over the top for me. Rusty Nail is a creepy dude! Whenever he spoke he simply felt sinister. He seemed to have super awareness or something since it felt like he could find the brothers at will. Simply knowing that Rusty Nail had to be somewhat nearby whenever he spoke was just spooky too. Paul Walker, Steve Zahn and Ted Levine proved to be a strong trio to watch.
I forgot or was simply too young to notice just how annoying the older brother is, in fact he's frankly pretty shady in general and started all of this craziness LOL. Of course the trucker is still nuts and should not be doing any of this but besides that obvious point, they did have a few chances to avoid these problems too, I think anyway. Also, at the end of the day the little bro still decided to pretend to be 'Candy Cane' even if he was convinced.
But yeah, 'Joy Ride' is a smooth movie that just works. Satisfactory levels of creepiness and suspense, it was also surprisingly funny at times. If you told me that 'Joy Ride' came out in 2004-2005 based on quality of film alone, I wouldn't question it. That was impressive to see.
Overall after all these years, I still really like 'Joy Ride', and I plan on watching the sequels which I don't believe I've seen! But it was slightly less good than I remember many years ago. But not by much. Considering how awesome I thought this movie was to begin with, saying it's not quite as good, still equates to a pretty solid movie!
