Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead
Starring: Nicki Aycox, Nick Zano, Laura Jordan, Kyle Schmid
Directed By: Louis Morneau
Written By: James Robert Johnston, Bennett Yellin
Released: October 7, 2008
Grade: C+

Joy Ride was by no means a great film, yet of course we have a sequel. The original film was enjoyable as it was because we were given fun characters and regardless of the torment they were on the run from, the light comedy worked very well off of the tension of the chase. Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead has the same type of chase scenes from the deranged trucker, Rusty Nail, but that is where the commonalities end. A lot was lost in the translation of the two films, particularly the charisma through characters that were both real and likeable. Joy Ride 2: Dead End is clearly trying to copy many elements of the first one and although it is not as high of a quality it is harmless entertainment.

Melissa (Aycox) and Bobby (Zano), an engaged couple, take a road trip with Melissa’s sister, Kayla (Jordan), to have joint bachelor and bachelorette parties in Las Vegas. On their way, they pick up Nik (Schmid), a guy that Kayla has been talking to on Myspace. He insists on going through the back roads rather than the highway. This quickly gets them lost. They stumble in to an abandoned house, which Nik takes the liberty of trashing just for kicks. Once they get in to the garage he wants to take the car and after some protesting they decide that it might be their only way out of there. Melissa leaves her phone number and they agree to take the car back with money for the damages once they go to town and get a rental. The next morning when they eat breakfast out, Nik begins insulting the truckers and when Bobby leaves to go to the bathroom he disappears This happens just as Melissa is getting a call from the guy they “borrowed” the car from. He claims he won’t call the cops as long as they don’t. He reveals that this is because he has kidnapped Bobby.

Rusty Nail gives Melissa and her friends instructions on what they must do if she ever wants to see Bobby again. She agrees without question since she won’t be held responsible for being the factor that kills Bobby off. They find out that Rusty Nail saw them and was the one that Kayla gave the finger too. Since she gave him the finger he figured it was his now. He demands that it be torn from her hand and delivered to him. The requests just keep on piling up including Nik dressing up as a transsexual towards a crowd of truckers, many with guns and aggression. It becomes obvious that his goal is just to destroy them one by one. He said he would reunite them if they did everything that he said, but this doesn’t mean that the reunion will be composed of living bodies.

The acting didn’t compare with the first at all. It was decent for the most part, but there just wasn’t the same likeability and character there. Nick Zano was pretty decent as the straight character. His role was meant to replace Paul Walker’s, but he just wasn’t given enough to really do this. Walker’s character at least was given some sense of character through the crush on the best friend along with some family issues especially with his brother. We know Bobby is getting married and we don’t know much more. This limit’s the concern we have since we really don’t even know him. Nicki Aycox seemed natural enough alongside Zano and did manage to bring out the desperation that comes with even the thought of losing a loved one in such a traumatic way. Laura Jordan did a decent job too, she was charismatic enough too. Although like the others I have mentioned she just wasn’t given enough of a characterization to really be real enough to us. Kyle Schmid was really horrible as Nik though, which seems overly obvious since Nik was a terrible character as well. Out of all of the roles this was the most pointless, but Schmid actually makes you genuinely hate him. This shouldn’t be the outcome since he is replacing Steve Zhan as the idiot who gets them in to the whole mess. There are a few distinctions between them though. Zahn depicted the loveable idiot, and although he was the one who was known for screwing up he was shown a bit of depth since he was conscious of how others viewed him and the hardships of knowing that his own parents didn’t have faith in him anymore. With Nik, we’re are just given an all around scum. He breaks in to a house and smashes everything up in sight to try to put up the whole big and bad act. This is easy to do when no one is there, but I am not so sure he would have this courage if the situation were a little different. Then he has the bright idea of stealing the car, which by the way he had no intentions of bringing back like the others did. Then when they are at breakfast he goes out of his way to insult truckers when they are at a restaurant crawling with them and makes a scene about it. He screams out that he is “raging against the machine” to truckers, just more of him thinking he is a bad ass. It is not just his behavior but the fact that every single one of these things is part of Rusty Nail’s revenge upon them. He has insulted truckers and him personally, and stole from him. The whole mess is his fault since he is the one who wanted to go on the back roads, which got them lost in the first place. At one point Nik even tries to bail out of Rusty Nail’s demands and tells Kayla, “Sorry, but you’re just not worth it”, as he leaves her there to die a terrible death. He is always expecting everything out of others yet he doesn’t seem to have any consideration even in a time of life or death.

Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead still keeps up most of the fun thriller chase scenes that the first did. The gore is pretty decent especially at the end. This is without a doubt the high point of the film. It isn’t until this point when Rusty Nails is torturing Bobby and Nik that Rusty Nails really comes alive. Even when Nik was being tortured he was still angering me, trying to get Bobby to save him when he clearly can’t even save himself. If you don’t feel for a character in the last and very violent hour of their life it is clear that there is just no compassion to be found within this character. Rusty plays a little game with them. One of them has to roll the dice and whatever number the dice says will dictate in what way he tortures the other. This goes back and forth until the method finishes one of them off. Of course, this isn’t the end of it, Rusty Nails is still destroying the girls who aren’t even there and setting up the final death hanging the last victim by the chains in the back of his truck. The game made for a brutal and uncomfortable setting and one of the gorier moments in the film. It also highlighted just how crazy our villain is. This is a very fun moment, seeing Rusty Nails at his craziest, but this is really just fun as there isn’t a ton of intelligence there. He tells them that he is punishing them for stealing his car. When Nik tells him he was only using a weapon as a safety precaution fearing that he was going to kill him, Rusty says two wrongs don’t make a right. It just seems hypocritical since he makes it very clear that this second wrong is what he is making up for, yet he is getting revenge on him, doing the same exact thing he just claimed was wrong in the first place. Of course we don’t really buy that Rusty is doing this for any logical reason, especially not for any sense of righteousness. He is just a crazy man who kills as many innocent people that he comes in contact with. He just gets bored with the hitchhikers that he picks up and murders and wants someone who gives him a motive that he will use, but not really care about at all. That probably wasn’t even Rusty’s car. Since he seems to have eyes everywhere, he most likely just saw it and with the phone number figured it would be the perfect opportunity to murder a few more people that might be a bit farther from his immediate reach. I enjoyed that they kept the character creepy even if it is one who really has no motives. Luckily, they didn’t go too far to add the smarts since he is a better killer kept simple and unknown.

The thing that makes it obvious that the sequel is the lesser film is that there was drastically less time put in to the characters. This is part of what kept things interesting and made us care what was going on in the original. Also, in the first one they were messing around and made the wrong mistake. In this one, it was just one idiot move after the next and in an almost insulting way that you wanted at least Nik to die. The realism and light fun is taken away from it. Regardless, all things considered, this being a direct-to-DVD sequel, it could have been a lot worse. Most of the characters, although they didn’t get us to care, weren’t really stereotypical and most of the acting was decent. The gore was pretty good, the villain of Rusty Nails was intact, and the overall fun thrill ride aspect was still there.