Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead starts as four friends are driving across the open desert on their way to Las Vegas for a party, sisters Melissa (Nicki Aycox) & Kayla (Laura Jordon) & their boyfriends Bobby (Nick Zano) & Nick (Kyle Schmid). While driving down an old dirt road their car breaks down & they find themselves stuck, with no option but to walk they eventually stumble across a house that seems abandoned but as luck would have it a nice car is sitting in the garage full of gas & ready to go. The four decide to borrow it so they can get back to civilisation but when the owner returns later he isn't too pleased that they took his car. A serial killer who calls himself Susty Nail (Mark Gibbon) he sets out to teach the four friends a lesson & starts to psychologically & psychically torture them with his intent to kill them after he's had some fun but the plucky Melissa fights back & tries to outwit & out-think Rusty Nail & save herself & her friends...

This American & Canadian co-production was directed by Louis Momeau & is a reasonable time-waster if your desperate & there's nothing else on telly but I would struggle to call it anything else other than watchable. A direct to video sequel to the theatrically released Joy Ride (2001) this is a fairly routine sequel that is more of a rehash of the original than something significantly different, as I said it's not too bad for what it is but Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead feels a little predictable & a little forgettable. The character's are alright but again with it's cast of perfect looking teens you get the impression Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead was written & made with demographics in mind, we never learn anything about Ruty Nail & why he decides to play games with the four teens, why not just kill them & be done with it? Why does he not follow up on wanting Kayla's middle finger after making such a big issue of it? The ending feels a little rushed too, how did Bobby get to Melissa so quickly & how did he know where she was? Come to think of it how did Melissa know where Rusty Nail had parked his truck? At just under 90 minutes it moves along at a decent pace, the game of cat & mouse occasionally works but sometimes feels like padding & the body count is maybe a little on the low side. Not bad I suppose but not exactly great either, watchable enough for what it is in a teen horror thriller sort of way.

A I said the body count & gore factor is a little disappointing, a woman is decapitated, there's a severed finger, a ripped off jaw & someone gets a steel rod rammed through their head but otherwise not a lot. In fact out of the four lead teens two of them are still standing at the end. There are a couple of impressive looking crashes & explosions including Rusty Nail's truck falling off a cliff in slow motion at the end & exploding at the bottom. Available in an 'Unrated' version on video & an edited cut which gets shown on telly it's safe to assume the Unrated cut is a lot better with added gore (not that there's much to begin with),added nudity (not that there's much to begin with) & added profanity (not that there's much to begin with).

With a supposed budget of about $5,000,000 this has good production values & looks nice enough, filmed in British Columbia in Canada although set entirely in the US. The acting is alright, the material isn't great & one dimensional so it was never going to award winning stuff.

Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead is a passable time-waster, it has a decent enough story with some thrills, a bit of gore, a bit of tension & the ultimate question of what will happen next & how will our teen stars get out of it but not much beyond that. Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead is the sort of film you watch & enjoy it perfectly enough but within a day or two you have completely forgotten it.

I do enjoy a good horror movie, and the psychological horror movies especially so, and "Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead" did indeed have the potential to be a great movie. And given my interest in the horror genre, of course I sat down to watch it.

The story, however, turned out to be just another generic run-of-the-mill psychological chase and terrorizing horror movie. It is about a group of people whose car breaks down and they find an old, rundown house in the middle of nowhere. They find a car in the garage and decide to take it, as no one is at home, with the intent to return later on with the car and pay for damages to the property. It turns out that the owner of the house and car is a cruel truck driver and he takes up the chase of the young people, hellbent on causing them harm and terrorizing them.

Sure, the storyline was not something new or innovative, and it was in fact something that had been seen in other movies. But still, it did have potential. However, director Louis Morneau just didn't manage to make "Joyride 2: Dead Ahead" stand out in the genre. The movie certainly was entertaining enough, but it just didn't have that special touch to it.

The acting in the movie was adequate, and people did actually perform well enough with their given roles and characters. However, the sadistic truck driver character was just a bit too generic and over-used in other movies similar to this.

There weren't anything particular scary about the movie or the things that happened throughout the course of the movie. But still, I will say, that many of the scenes were nicely set up and executed, they just weren't particularly frightening.

All in all, "Joyride 2: Dead Ahead" is an entertaining enough horror for what it turned out to be. You just shouldn't expect anything extraordinary here, and it is essentially something that has been seen in other similar movies.

This serviceable follow-up to the 2001 thriller (renamed ROADKILL over here in the UK) has all the makings of a fairly enjoyable B-movie and none of the characteristics of a keeper. The slim plotting sees sinister trucker Rusty Nail once more behind the wheel as he pursues a quartet of four 20-somethings along America's highways. Cue a fair amount of car crashes, bloodshed and even a little torture at one stage as the film veers into HOSTEL territory in a dingy basement filled with torture implements.

Director Louis Morneau has a knack for turning out entertaining B-movies on low budgets and originally became a filmmaker under the tutelage of Roger Corman. The highlight of his career is still the James Belushi sci fi RETROACTIVE, but I've also mildly enjoyed SOLDIER BOYZ and THE HITCHER II over the years (although the less said about BATS the better!). JOY RIDE 2 is neither his best nor his worst, merely another familiar road slasher film in a sub-genre filled with such fare.

The cast is undistinguished, with Nicki Aycox showing mettle as the heroine and Kyle Schmid irritating as an emo character. Much of the focus is on titillation, with Aycox forced to strip to her underwear for the pleasure of the villain (and viewer). There's a sleazy atmosphere and plenty of hints at unpleasant torture and bloodshed, although it's more a case of what you don't see rather than what you do see given the paucity of the budget. The ending is straight out of DUEL, a much better film about a psychotic truck driver than this, although I did enjoy JOY RIDE 2 better than its predecessor as it has no pretensions to be an A-list thriller.