Joyride 3 Roadkill
(2014)
This is Rusty Nail.
I knew a Candy Cane once
We should all know who Rusty Nail is by now.
He’s been with us for 13 years and his is not a name a lot of horror fans know of despite (or more likely because of) a very lacklustre sequel, the first Joyride (2001) starring the late Paul Walker was a very good, tense horror that introduced us to our faceless, CB obsessed lorry driver.
No frills and always one step ahead Rusty would terrify any motorist that made Joyride almost as much fun for me to watch as Duel (1971) was when I was a sprog.
Then we got Joyride 2 (2008) Oh god that was a flat tyre of a film. We went from a Porsche to a Lada and we felt every pothole along the way but Rusty at least emerged undamaged and now we Have Joyride 3: Roadkill (Roadkill was an alternate name for the first film) but will this end up in a ditch too?
Starting with a scene involving a drug taking couple looking to lure someone to their motel room to do over for more drug money we notice the biggest change, or new direction, this film decides to take. Rusty is no longer confined to his truck.
I know he left it in the other films too but now he spends more time out of his cabin and he is a powerhouse but what do you expect when he is played by former Jason Voorhees actor Ken Kirzinger. At first I was unsure of this but it does free him up to exact his vengeance.
The focus of his vengeance are a racing team on their way to a meet in Canada who take a shortcut that is now infamous due to all the killings Rusty does on that stretch of tarmac. In fact so infamous it no longer appears on GPS but that could be because they are using apple maps.
The racing team are a nice bunch who bicker and complain as you would expect a group of friends to do so and despite this starting because of the obligatory hothead in the group dicking around they don’t deserve their fate.
Like the first you never know what Rusty is planning and he always manages to manipulate any situation to his advantage, he isn’t watered down for this second sequel and neither is the film. Quite pacey, adequately acted and most importantly varied and nice looking death scenes (that is why we watch these types of horror films) this is a return to form for the series.
Looking around it gets some low scores but horror films like these tend to fare poorly in that department as horror can be treated like the unwelcome movie genre and any film that falls into this group is judged to be bad by association hence the low scores when we all know the unwelcome genre is really chick flicks.
Not as good as the original, but who would expect to be so, and does feel like the straight-to-DVD sequel it is but after watching a lot of crappy modern horror recently it was good and I was entertained from start to finish so who can ask for more.
Lets hope we see more of our new pal Rusty in the future