John Dahl, purveyor of quality erotic thrillers to the gentry, and the man responsible for making Linda Fiorentina a star, has here given us a bit of a dud. This is despite a game performance from Steve Zahn, who shines whenever and wherever screenwriters Clay Tarver and JJ Abrams give him a halfway decent line. Zahn is Fuller, a cheeky minor lawbreaker just out of the joint, getting a ride from his goody-two-shoes brother Lewis (Paul Walker) in Lewis's second-hand early-70s automobile. In a tribute to the car's retro feel, Fuller installs a beat-up old CB radio and taunts a sinister anonymous trucker - handle: Rusty Nail - who naturally turns out to be an out-and-out psycho and comes after them.

Like Jeepers Creepers, this is a horror movie in the tradition of Spielberg's Duel, which only works if everyone behaves as if it's the 1970s. Granted, Lewis can only afford a car of that vintage and they bought the museum-piece CB gizmo for a laugh, but how come no one has a cell phone? Unlike Jeepers Creepers, which abjectly collapsed into supernatural horror, Roadkill at least keeps its realist nerve, but never puts in anything like the patient work Spielberg did for Duel, meticulously establishing the normal life of his hero, well before the truck-monster showed up. That was an investment which paid off handsomely in terms of being genuinely scary, but Roadkill has nothing similar, so spines remain unchilled.