A gritty, action filled roadtrip with piling bodies and a rising speedometer, Roadkill (2024) will be debuting in limited theaters and on video on demand early this January. Directed and written by Warren Fast, this is a whole lot of thriller with the goal in mind to send its viewers away with messages of confronting trauma, seeking justice, and overcoming personal hardship. While the leads of this movie are excited with the final product reaching audiences after nearly three years of work from conception to completion, as well as eager to show off the intense effects and stunts that went with this work, Fast hopes you’ll walk away feeling more than just adrenaline. With crackling, monochrome camera work we begin with a flashback, drowned in gray, cutting to a young boy, dirty, tired, resting in a small house. When his mother arrives and sees he’s yet to eat the food she’s prepared she gets physical, telling him to get out of the home, relegating him to sleep in his beloved dog’s house. When morning breaks, the boy finds his mother laughing wryly over her cigarette, his pet impaled with knives and hung on a post for him to discover.
All just a nightmare, as The Hitchhiker (Ryan Knudson) wakes with a start from his sleeping memories, and we find ourselves rooted in summer’s end of 1983, somewhere in the southeast (most of the filming was done in Bay County, Florida). As the gentle music that ushered us into the Hitchhiker’s dream fades like the memory of his past life with family and children, we are introduced to a young lady, known only as The Driver (Caitlin Carmichael), lollipop as cherry red as her Super Sport hotrod, working on lists and maps. Tire treads and slow footsteps begin to inch the pair towards each other, and The Driver happens upon The Hitchhiker waiting in the road.
His story is sad, one of loss, but The Driver is looking for the same destination as The Hitchhiker, apparently a distant town where his mother lives. Seeing an opportunity for better directions while earning points towards karma for helping a stranger, The Driver invites the man into the car and the two hit the open road. Conversation is short but empathetic; no judgment seems to pass between the two as they start to speak. The Hitchhiker asks her intentions in the far-off town and she prefers that stays private, for now. The pair stops to gas up: The Driver finds herself inside looking to pay some unsavory gentleman for the fuel, meanwhile The Hitchhiker deals with the newly arrived sheriff (Warren Fast) who finds a violation on the fine piece of automotive workmanship. The questions from the lawman start easy, but soon become more pointed: where is he going, where is he from, what is his name? Before anything is divulged, the radio saves the man from having to ante up personal information. While the two get back on the road and skid off it equally as fast, avoiding a turtle, the sheriff is busy on a messy call for bodies they’ve found, recently killed. There’s been murders recently, the killer dubbed The Highway Hunter; victims are mostly drifters or call girls, but these two are local, and there may have been more that match the MO they simply don’t know about. The chase is on for the little red car that didn’t sit right with the sheriff.
Echoes of other beautiful young women that have been wronged seem to resonate in this piece as our overly sexualized, beautiful Driver has all the hallmark signs of PTSD, along with the quick thinking and personal will required to pursue her goal. Promising Young Woman comes to mind as The Driver slips in and out of using doe eyed, girlish charm to disarm officers and male townsfolk, and Revenge comes to memory as well, a lovely young woman on a hellish quest for justice. Carmichael is a game leading lady, taking on most of the stunts you see in the film herself including some wild driving and fighting that takes her performance over the top in terms of commitment. Her relationship with The Hitchhiker is a fascinating one to watch evolve from perfect strangers, to friends, and past that point, balancing the emotional capabilities of two people who lack trust. The two do an excellent job with not so much as names to create chemistry, keeping you invested in the mile markers passing by and what the destination truly means to both passengers. Speaking of cast, Danielle Harris (of Halloween 4 & 5 fame) stops in for a small role as a local, Allison, gracing us with some true old school 1980s glory.
Editing and music are particularly efficient in the way they’re used. Songs on the radio make for excellent transitions and the untraceable rock and pop songs seem to place us right in the time period. Clever editing pulls you back and forth between the police hunt and the journey in the red car. You’ll have plenty of chases, mysteries, and surprises to keep you interested, as Carmichael said when asked, this is a full throttle movie that doesn’t take its foot off the gas pedal. Explosions and compound fractures are part of the territory with this thriller, using practical effects to make some nasty looking wounds and create some impressive pyrotechnics when the time comes. As a whole, this thriller is a fair watch, sitting shotgun to these two characters as we are supposed to be merely passengers on this journey with them, absorbing the story as well as the intensity. If you’re looking for an off the rails revenge flick to start off the New Year, look no further than Roadkill, boasting killer leads, an emotional and literal journey to partake in, and action from start to finish.
Roadkill (2024) will be available on VOD from January 5th.