[yasr_overall_rating]
Dan and his pregnant wife, Mindy, fight for their lives when they are held hostage in their car by an unseen gunman on the side of a desolate mountain road.
“Roadside” takes place on Christmas Eve as we follow Dan (Ace Marrero) and his pregnant wife Mindy (Katie Stegeman), who are driving through the mountains on a deserted road on the way to see Dan’s family. After a near-miss experience on the road with another driver, they stop at a gas station to fill up and gather some supplies for the long trek ahead of them and it is here that they find out that the driver of the truck they encountered, is a local man who apparently has a death wish after his wife and only child were killed in a car crash. They get back into their vehicle and down the road, they come across a large tree trunk lying in the middle of the road. After clearing it away, Dan makes his way back to the car where a gunshot rings out accompanied by a voice that tells him that he has to stay in the middle of the road, otherwise he will be shot.
Initially skeptical, Dan tests the shooter only to receive a gunshot wound to his hand. With Mindy on the verge of having her baby, between them, they must try and outsmart the shooter so that they can escape with their lives and so begins a hellish nightmare for the couple that will last way into the night. Typically, a movie that takes place in one location can get monotonous and mundane and relies on good dialogue and scenarios to keep it interesting and thankfully, director Eric England successfully manages to keep the tension and suspense flowing by introducing new plot devices and characters at the most inopportune time, depending on whether you are the shooter or Dan and Mindy. As the night lethargically progresses and the temperature quickly begins to drop, you can literally feel the cold permeating into Dan’s tired body and you wonder how he will survive the night.
“Roadside” is reminiscent of other movies with the same sort of plot like “Phone Booth,” “Panic Room” and “The Taking of Pelham 123,” where the central characters are trapped in the same location by force. “Roadside” spends the majority of its runtime with just Dan and Mindy and a voice from the trees and on paper, while this idea might not sound too interesting, director Eric England excels in keeping the apprehension and the uncertainty of the lead characters cognizant right up to the very end. Having said that however, the finale, for me, came much too quickly and once the identity of the shooter is realized, the big reveal is a character other than who you thought it might be, thereby throwing all logic out the window, it just doesn’t make sense and when it comes to horror films and scary movies, sometimes, giving the audience exactly what they expect, is the best choice.
Available on DVD and Digital Download now
