Year:	2002
Director:	John Dahl

Cast:

Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, Leelee Sobeiski

A deceptively simple idea brilliantly crafted and told. A typical college boy (Walker) has the hots for his friend (Sobeiski) at another college and drives across the country to meet her. On the way, he bails his wayward brother (Zahn, looking so much like Michael J Fox playing Marty McFly it's uncanny) out of prison to tag along. After they install a CB radio and play a trick on a menacing-sounding trucker, terrible consequences ensue as he trails them from one desert highway truck stop and gas station to another, seemingly intent on torment followed by murder.

It's been described as film noir, which I couldn't really place, but the acting is superb (apart from Sobeiski's mildly irritating accent), the action and terror startlingly realistic, and not a minute has been spared to notch up the tension and dread.

The Australian distributor, as a point of interest, held over the release for a long time and changed the name back to the original US moniker - one very early trailer called it something else and it turned up in it's theatrical form many months later.