A couple of young revheads and their womenfolk head out on the open road to some typical bogan-y car rally or some such. Unfortunately, they encounter noted motor-psycho Rusty Nail (Ken Kirzinger) who doesn’t like the cut of their jib, and spends 80 or so minutes terrorising them.
“Joy Ride 2” (AKA “Road Kill 2”) was no world-beater, but the series falls completely off the rails with this tired, blandly ‘safe’ 2014 sequel from writer-director Declan O’Brien. O’Brien didn’t bring much of anything to “Wrong Turn 3” and “Wrong Turn 4” (I haven’t seen the infamous “Sharktopus”, in case you’re wondering), and the trend pretty much continues with this toothless effort.
Ken Kirzinger may have played Jason Voorhees in “Freddy vs. Jason” but he is certainly no Rusty Nail, he brings none of the menace or evil of Ted Levine in the first film. At least Mark Gibbon in “Joy Ride 2” managed a decent vocal imitation, if overall coming up short. Kirzinger isn’t helped, though by hack director O’Brien who gives us too good a look at Rusty Nail far too early, and shows him to be a run-of-the-mill, unthreatening trucker. He’s just some guy. Levine managed to achieve so much more with so much less of a physical presence in the first film. It was all his deep, threatening voice, and that was all the film needed. Kirzinger barely even comes halfway to getting the gravelly deep voice right. Within the first 16 minutes, I was already out, mentally, and the rest is barely an improvement.
The opening kill has some nice gore I suppose, but it’s pretty much a rip-off of THAT moment from “The Hitcher”, although I guess you could credit it with actually showing the goods, whereas “The Hitcher” (a brilliant, somewhat misunderstood film) cut away. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, so yeah…I’m still gonna stick with “The Hitcher”. The cast are a nondescript bunch of nobodies, but their performances aren’t terrible. It’s a shame that Heather Hueging’s ‘Large Marge’ the waitress is just a one-and-done, because her cameo is hilariously weird. It’s the characters that are the problem. Our protagonists are unlikeable ‘hoons’ as they’d be called in Australia, I just didn’t warm to any of them. And O’Brien was certainly giving us a whole lotta time to try, as after 25 minutes the protagonists have barely set out on their journey. Slow-moving would be a charitable term for this one. Cynical springs to mind too, as this is ultimately another waste of time from O’Brien, giving us the same old thing with diminishing returns.
It’s crisply shot by Michael Marshall (“Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning”, “Wrong Turn 4”), and there’s a terrifically grisly bit with a jack, but this is a bore. Gory, well-lit, and with good stunts, but so what?
OVERALL SUMMARY
Unless the idea of Rusty Nail having internet access this time is your idea of turning the franchise on its head creatively.skip this one. It’s pretty shamefully simplistic and tired, and overexposing its villain completely deflates the whole thing. Pretty useless, really.
