Not THAT bad. Fairly good acting and a script that seems to work as well. It gives what it should, plus a lot of gore. Well worth watch if you liked the first, and maybe also "Duel" and "Breakdown" in the same style.

RELEASED TO VIDEO IN 2008 and directed by Louis Morneau, "Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead" chronicles events on the desert highways out West when 4 youths on their way to Las Vegas breakdown and come across Rusty Nail, the diabolical trucker from 2001's "Joy Ride." One of the reasons "Duel" (1971) is so memorable is because it was believable. Something like it COULD happen. "Joy Ride" was cut from the same cloth, but added the youth element and the slasher angle. It was engaging enough, but ruined by mounting improbabilities, particularly in the last act."Joy Ride 2" is better, with a few notable scenes, but it's also marred by cartoony horror implausibilities. The prologue, for instance, made me bust out laughing (you'll know what I mean). Still, the movie successfully makes a mysterious trucker and his ominous truck a formidable horror icon.Nicki Aycox arises as the female protagonist with mettle while statuesque Laura Jordan plays her sister. Both are serviceable in the female department. Nick Zano is solid as the male protagonist, but his role is limited. Meanwhile Kyle Schmid is extremely obnoxious as the arrogant goth punk or whatever. Rusty Nail gives him a nice slice of humble pie.THE MOVIE RUNS 91 minutes and was shot in British Columbia, Canada (the Thompson-Nicola Region, east of the Cascades). WRITERS: James Robert Johnston & Bennett Yellin.GRADE: B-

Cheese is a matter of taste. Some people like strong Cheddar. You can even get seriously strong Cheddar. It's the same with skiing. Extreme skiing is not for everyone.Extreme horror is not for me. I think many enthusiasts would regard this as being mild horror. Oh well, it's strong enough for me. Not really up my street. I prefer monsters and the supernatural, but this film is well-produced, well-acted and delivers the good.The usual tradition with teen slasher films is that the teens are not very nice from the first and we perversely do not wish them well. Here, for a change, three of the people involved are eminently decent. There is an annoying character but he is the agent of the action. Fair play to him, he acted well through several different emotional situations.The villain is appropriately sadistic. A kind of Johnny Cash, I would say, and everything Johnny Cash represents in my limited world view.Production values good. A limited play set but the pieces are handled well.Oh, the scene where the irritating Facebook guy doesn't want to do something is very good. That's where he's arguing that he doesn't want to buy something. I've been in that situation and the Joy Ride version is very true to life.

As a sequel, it's is somewhat disappointing. It's not as bad as some other sequels and if it would have been a stand alone movie, it would be even okay. It's hard to watch it this way, though. But at least you get the feeling, that it wasn't a total waste of time after you're through.The story has some flaws. Even though the acting isn't that bad, they behave pretty stupid and obvious all the time. Also, they didn't manage to make you feel any sympathy or compassion for the characters and the agonies they go through.The gore in the movie is mostly out of place and not even exciting or shocking. It doesn't suit the situations and seems to have been build in only to make the movie more interesting. But it doesn't work, with one exception. I found the dice torturing game at the end of the movie quite interesting. It remembered me of the saw movies and it had more potential. Unfortunately, they kept the game too short. A few more rounds with no early game over for the opposite player would have been better. There is one of the plot errors, too. Why would Rusty Nail bother with the most cruel and brutal deaths in the movie and then return to such "harmless" things like heating up a letter in order to burn Bobbys breast? You'd expect at least that he would burn his breast with the blowtorch. Maybe he got bored by the dullness of the movie by himself.Even Rusty Nail seems to have changed since the first movie. In Joyride, you could understand why he did the things he did. He had some deeper motives and a reason. In the sequel, he's been degraded to a plain sadistic psycho with a habit of torturing people for trivial things.If you don't have high expectations or haven't seen the first movie, you might enjoy Joyride. I like trucks in movies, so I didn't mind much about the flaws.