Joy Ride

On a cross country drive from Colorado to New Jersey, three young friends strike up a conversation with a trucker over their CB radio as they cruise through the night. To break the ice they play a prank, swapping loud and outrageous identities, and tease him with a fake backstory. The banter soon turns darker as the trucker reveals a troubling persistence and a willingness to stalk their movement along the highways. What begins as a reckless joke becomes a dangerous game of cat and mouse, with the trio scrambling to outpace a ruthless predator who seems to appear wherever they go. The tension rides on the radio and the open road, threatening to swallow them whole in the dark.

John Dahl directs this 2001 thriller drawn from a concept by Clay Tarver and J.J. Abrams. With a modest budget of about 23 million, the film stars Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, and Leelee Sobieski as travelers pressed into danger tonight.

Joy Ride grossed about 36.6 million worldwide against a 23 million budget, making it a modest but solid return for a mid range thriller from an early 2000s studio slate. The movie found a modest audience and post theatrical life.

Rusty Nail, the unseen trucker, lingered in audience memory as an emblem of digital anonymity turned deadly. The CB radio premise seeded later thrillers and urban legends about strangers on the line. The film's relentless pursuit on open highways shaped how tension is built through sound and distance for decades.

Critical responses were mixed, praising the performances and the lean efficiency of the setup while noting some predictability in the midstream chase. The film centers on miscommunication, paranoia, and the threat of violence that can erupt from a casual radio conversation, exposing trust as a fragile illusion on the road.