Highway to Hell: 5 Road Trip Horror Movies Ranked
Highways of horror
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Road trip horror movies are closely related to the backwoods horror subgenre – films like Wrong Turn, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The difference between the two is that road trip horror is about the journey, not the destination.
These movies generally don’t have a main location. Instead, they take place on dark highways and forgotten country roads, where danger lurks at every turn. Here are some key elements found in horror movie road trips:
-An isolated rural setting far from the comforts of home.
-Naive protagonist(s) who aren’t familiar with the local area or terrain.
-A relentless villain with a seemingly omniscient ability to track his victims across vast swaths of open road.
-Obligatory scene where the protagonist’s car breaks down at the worst possible time.
-Obligatory scene where the protagonist makes a futile attempt to contact the police.
-At least one character (usually the protagonist’s love interest) gets abducted.
-At least one major explosion.
Join me as I explore the dangers of dark country roads. Here are five road trip horror movies ranked from worst to best.
5. Rest Stop (2006)
Nicole (Jaimie Alexander) and her boyfriend Jess (Joey Mendicino) are traveling through a sparsely populated backroad on their way to Los Angeles. They park at a rest stop so Nicole can go to the bathroom. When she returns, Jess is gone. He’s been abducted by a mysterious stranger in a yellow pickup truck.
Stranded in the middle of nowhere, the desperate Nicole finds a CB radio to call for help. But can she trust the mysterious man who answers her pleas?
Rest Stop is a low budget and amateurish direct-to-DVD movie that features the grungy dreariness typical of early 2000s horror movies. The characters are bland and the plot is muddled.
Nicole spends the movie screaming, crying, and cursing. That’s her entire personality. The villains are trailer park caricatures who we’ve seen in countless horror movies.
The gender reversal of having the guy get abducted, and the girl trying to save him, is a nice idea. But it’s not executed well. This one is only for hardcore road trip horror movie fans. If anyone cares, this has a sequel: Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back.
Where to Watch:
4. Wolf Creek (2005)
Liz (Cassandra McGrath) and Kristy (Kestie Morassi) are twentysomething British tourists visiting Australia. They pick up a local guy named Ben (Nathan Phillips) and head into the isolated outback in what becomes one of the most harrowing and shocking horror movie road trips ever made.
You’d think Ben is the luckiest guy on Earth, getting to spend a vacation with two beautiful women with sexy accents. Unfortunately for him, and even more unfortunately for the girls, a horrible fate awaits them. They encounter Mick (John Jarratt), a serial killer and rapist who is like a deranged version of Crocodile Dundee.
Wolf Creek is one of the most brutal and sadistic horror films of its era. It pulls no punches and doesn’t follow typical genre rules. The graphic content is less shocking by today’s standards, in an era where movies like Terrifier have become mainstream, but still – this is a nasty one.
Wolf Creek is like two different movies. The first half could almost pass as a romantic drama. It’s only midway through that the horror begins. Despite its polarizing and controversial nature, Wolf Creek was a surprise success. It was followed by a sequel and a TV series.
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3. Duel (1971)
David Mann (Dennis Weaver), a salesman traveling through rural California, is menaced by a mysterious truck driver in Steven Spielberg’s directorial debut. Duel, which was made for television, is a simple but tense thriller with minimal dialogue and little on the soundtrack other than the sounds of radios and engines. There’s no gore, but plenty of suspense.
Duel‘s subtlety harkens back to a bygone era, when viewers had much longer attention spans than they do today. Like Joy Ride (more on that movie shortly), Duel keeps the identity of its villain mysterious. The evil truck driver has no dialogue and no known motivation. He exists only to torment Mann.
In fact, the driver is barely a character at all. It’s almost like the truck has a mind of its own, like the car in Christine. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, the truck obliterates a payphone that Mann tries to use to call the police.
Spielberg is rarely associated with horror now, but he had many forays into the genre back in the ’70s and ’80s. He’s stated that he would like to do more horror in the future.
Where to Watch:
2. Joy Ride (2001)
Lewis (played by a pre-fame Paul Walker), a Cal Berkely college student, hits the road to bail his never-do-well older brother out of jail in Salt Lake City. He then heads to Colorado to pick up a lady friend.
The brothers, bored by the long journey, use a CB radio to pull a prank. Lewis disguises his voice to sound feminine and tries to seduce a random truck driver that answers their call.
Their victim, a man known only as Rusty Nail, is a psychopathic stalker who relentlessly pursues them through the American heartland after he discovers the ruse.
Lewis later picks up Venna (Leelee Sobieski), his childhood friend/love interest. Rusty Nail takes a liking to the pretty young woman and decides he wants her for himself.
Joy Ride, which was written by J.J. Abrams before he became famous, is loaded with palpable tension and suspense. Rusty Nail, who is voiced by Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs), has one of the scariest voices in horror movie history. He is kept largely in the shadows, which adds to his mystique.
This film is one of the creepiest road trip horror movies despite having a low body count and little major gore. It was followed by two direct-to-video sequels. Neither feature any of the cast from the original.
Where to Watch:
1. The Hitcher (1986)
Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) picks up a mysterious hitchhiker he encounters in West Texas. The man, who calls himself John Ryder, threatens Jim with a switchblade. Jim pushes him out of the car and escapes, but the incident is just the beginning of one of the most hellish horror movie road trips in history.
Ryder stalks Jim through desolate rural Texas, murdering anyone who gets in his way. He throws police off his trail by framing Jim for several murders. Jim meets Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a cute cook at a local diner. She joins his battle against Ryder, but The Hitcher abducts her, leading to the movie’s infamous climax.
The Hitcher tops my list because it effectively balances gore and suspense. The previous movies are either gruesome but not suspenseful (Wolf Creek, Rest Stop) or have plenty of tension but lack gore (Duel, Joy Ride).
Plotwise, this seems like many road trip horror movies. But it’s far more than a generic thriller. Rutger Hauer’s sinister performance sets this one apart. John Ryder is one of horror’s most chilling depictions of pure evil. Even Rusty Nail would be terrified of this guy.
There’s also plenty of surreal weirdness, including a severed finger that ends up in a bag of french fries (reminds me of the “handburger” from Slumber Party Massacre II), and the much-discussed latent subtext between Ryder and Halsey. There’s palpable sexual tension in this cat and mouse game, at least from Ryder’s side.
The Hitcher was followed by a sequel, The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting (2003), and a 2007 remake, with Sean Bean in the title role.
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