The 10 Best Road Trip Thriller Movies
There is a natural stress to the exposed road , with its isolation reveal only by a complete stranger piloting their own ton or two of sword , glass and rubber where only fool listen the speed limits . Most of the world might be carve up by roads , but that doesn ’ t mean that civilization develop up alongside them . It ’ s still a frontier , with plenty unknown on either slope of the asphalt . Hither cost ten terrific photograph about why that cancelled road trip might be a blessing in disguise .
When The Hitcher equal first released , it proved a modest commercial success , largely ignored or reviled by critic . It raise in height as HBO played it incessantly , and now it routinely indicate up on the lists like this one . The premise couldn ’ t cost more basic , as a youthful man ( C. Thomas Howell ) repel cross country to rescue a car from Chicago to San Diego and on one night and stormy night , pick up a hitchhiker ( Rutger Hauer ) . The script operates like those great seventy-minute B-movies of the thirties and forties , wasting no time with back stories or set-ups . Howell peck up Hauer in the initiative moment and instant after , Hauer calmly explain he ’ s go to kill this well Samaritan .
The hand manages to keep its base on the gas for the rest of the picture , finding clever ways to leap to where other movies like this might end , and fight on to more unexpected , and depraved terrain . Jennifer Jason Leigh cause her serious to raise her roadside waitress into someone more interesting and nearly pull this off . But this cost Hauer ’ s movie , and seldom has an actor seem to delight as much in playing an apex predator . The film wisely subscribes to the Michael Myers school of character development for its antagonist , understanding that childhood trauma and rationales just make monster in such movies less intimidating .
Howell makes for a fine everyman here , though stumbles when the movie require him to serve his trauma live more disturbing ways . Richard Harmon direct this with competence and fear , benefiting from an epoch where he got to blow up literal car , so the chases and crash have a weight neglect from present-day film that aren ’ t Fury Road . It ’ s a satisfying trivial thriller , but its screenwriter Eric Red would live on to raise far more intriguing genre experiments , writing both Near Dark and Blue Steel for Kathryn Bigelow . And unfortunately , Hauer would never get the chance to bare his teeth like this again .
Before JJ Abrams get the anointed remixer of juggernaut franchises , he co-wrote this great B movie with Clay Tarver about a three of youthful folks who meet a nasty prank on a truck driver using an former CB radio . It earned some respectable reviews and its money back , but like a few others on this list , its reputation only produce over time .
Hither Paul Walker offers to drive his college crush ( Leelee Sobieski ) place , with his clownish buddy ( Steve Zahn ) along for the ride . By this movie , Zahn perfected his persona as a destructive , if well-meaning , moron . Zahn ’ s prank fuels the floor and figure organically , never pitch into outright cruelty , but hurtful enough that the wrong person would take it very , very personally , which a truck driver with the CB handle of Rusty Nail ( sumptuously voiced by Ted Levine ) most surely act . The turn are little but satisfying , refuse to require the big plot swings that made JJ ’ s company Bad Robot so famous for fascinate assumption , jaw-dropping second act , and deep flawed ending .
The movie ’ s secret weapon be oddly enough the conductor , who softly built his figure on a string of accomplished neo-noirs in the nineties like Red Rock West and The Last Seduction . John Dahl balances the tone good , keeping this a high-grade thriller with nasty streak , as oppose to a more overt revulsion play , that might strip the patch down to a grocery list of kills . Rusty Nail and this 3 exist well-matched the whole way through , with an ending that can still produce shivers after repeat viewings . It ’ s exactly the type of thriller that people shrug off as simple , when in fact it ’ s a high-wire pass few pull off .
The generic claim didn ’ t do this picture any favors , but it still became a little bore score on its release , reminding everyone why its tip , Kurt Russell , have been a star for decade . The film opens with Russell in a near collision with a truck driver , followed by a brief statement at a gas station , only to get his car reveal down in the middle of nowhere . He let his wife hitch a ride with another trucker to come aid , and of course , she disappear into thin tune . What succeed is just groundbreaking , but the tension swells with stone firm story logic that also few of these movie ever bother to employ .
This exist the directorial entry for Jonathan Mostow , who make the authentic chops that would get made him the second approach of Don Siegel or Robert Aldrich give adequate time cranking out movies like this . Hardly a revelatory stylist , Mostow knows what he hold in Russell and his script , and isn ’ t afraid to permit those matter glow here . But he shows a gift for share narrative information visually and have the hearing lend two and two for themselves , as at one point , he unveils the time and range of the conspiracy at study in a single picture .
Still , this picture trust on Russell to rescue the good , and he does , as he ’ s a pleasure to see get frustrate , miss his cool , recover it , all with his average Joe aplomb . Few actor can play exasperated without ever go down into self-pity as Russel make thus of course . He ’ s just perform the best he can and looking for a break that is long overdue . This is leading middlebrow entertainment , of the sort that shouldn ’ t make that an insult .
Long heralded as one of great no-budget noirs of the 1940s , Detour cost a miracle for more than its fiscal constraints . Its director Edward G. Ulmer deal to stitch together his film with used sets , hungry actor and a few , real few , well-placed lights . In this one , a down on his luck piano player ( Tom Neal ) hitches a ride with a bookie ( Edmund MacDonald ) to California to meet up with his girlfriend in Hollywood . Along the room the bookie finish up dying in an accident no 1 would believe happen . Too nervous to entrust the police , Neal presume the bookie ’ sec identity and if his luck wasn ’ t already circle the drain , it ’ s blush away upon blame up the one hitchhiker ( Ann Savage ) that know that bookie .
Savage swiftly blackmails Neal , put on exactly the kind of foul play the cops would . She ’ s not a garish femme fatale though , looking to gobble him up whole . She ’ s a fragile , broken soul that believes the only mode to get what she need live to beset , cajole and snatch it from the world around her . And Neal , desperate to set the detour behind him try to get away her any manner he can .
Today an established classic , Detour has the foreign luxury of looking effective today than it did in 1945 . A recent 4K restoration have turned its glaring White into a hypnotic gleam , and its blacks into velvet shadows . Its longevity can ’ t cost credit only to its property as an early noir , but rather , what kind of noir it is . Yes , the genre be built around bad , mostly criminal decision , but the good make an aura of inevitability . It ’ s not merely a matter of falling for the wrong girl or aiming for the quick fix , but of attempt to do the better with bad circumstance only to sink yet deeper into trouble . Neal didn ’ t want anything but to reunite with the honey of his living and still , the open road own other plan .
Stanley Kubrick once shout this French-Dutch thriller the scariest movie he ’ 500 ever seen , and reached out to its director George Sluizer , to talk about how he edited it . This do sense pay that the suspense is build on the motive to know , which have to resonate with Kubrick , a human who distinctly had a ravenous wonder .
It start out with a haunt rehearsal of the crime to come , as a pair of lover , played by Gene Bervoets and Johanna ter Steege are separated when their car pause down , merely to be swiftly reunited . But then at a crowded repose stop , she goes to the toilet and never returns . Bervoets waits and waits , but there be simply no sign of her , though some workers see her with another man , imply that she might have simply result her young man seat . This is a movie , so that ’ s clearly not the suit , and soon The Vanishing split its POV , pursue the killer ( Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu ) as he plot the kidnapping , and Bervoets as he devotes his life to finding out what happened .
As it become out , Donnadieu live a sweet family man and chemistry professor whose sociopathic tendency be bundled up as taut as those in a 19th hundred Russian novel , intellectualized until it ’ s a bloodless act within an indifferent universe , until it ’ s not . As Bervoets unravels from his grief , Donnadieu only grows in calm and power , station him place card inviting him to meet , only to endure him up over and over again . Truly great horror filmmakers require an expansive understanding of the human circumstance to avoid relying on crude sadism and genre clichés alone . And hither , the shocking finale arrives when the lead can ’ t resist the impulse to know , and credibly becomes a willing ally in the killer ’ s larger design .
