Joy Ride 3: Road Kill

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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.