“Joy Ride isn’t your typical thriller,” says executive producer Bridget Johnson. “It’s kind of a stealth character piece that has something to say about the relationship between these two brothers, one of whom has made some bad choices, the other who has trouble standing up for himself.”

The latest bad choice Fuller makes is when he decides to play a prank with the CB radio. Picking up a message from a lonely trucker who calls himself ‘Rusty Nail’, Fuller puts on a sexy female voice, gives himself the handle ‘Candy Cane’, and invites Rusty Nail to an evening of fun and games in a motel room up ahead on Interstate 80.

The idea is, Lewis, Fuller and Venna will be in a nearby room and be able to watch what happens when the lonely trucker finds the occupant of the room is a middle-aged businessman and that there is no Candy Cane, or indeed candy of any kind. Suffice it to say that the whole thing goes very badly wrong - for the businessman, and for Lewis, Fuller and Venna, who find their cover blown and Rusty Nail on their trail.

Road worriers: Leelee Sobieski, Paul Walker and Steve Zahn find that playing a prank on a mysterious trucker called Rusty Nail is not the smartest idea they ever had.

“I think there’s something inherently terrifying in pulling a prank on someone,” suggests producer and co-writer JJ Abrams, whose previous credits run an impressive range from Armageddon to Regarding Henry. “There’s always a chance that you’ll be screwing with the wrong person… and that that person has identified you. I think that’s why you giggle when you order pizzas for your neighbour. Everyone relates to the idea of playing a joke on someone, as well as to experiencing vicariously someone being ID’d for it. And that translates to Joy Ride: there’s a kind of thrill in watching the characters suffer the consequences for doing something that any one of us is capable of.”

But Joy Ride isn’t all black - or rather, it isn’t all thriller; there’s a lot of humour in it, too. Black humour, of course: it is, after all, a John Dahl movie. “He’s a great storyteller,” says Chris Moore, who produces alongside Abrams. “He can take a thriller and infuse it with character and humour, all while capturing the American landscape. It’s easy to find a director who can work on any one of those levels, but John excels at all of them.”

The idea for the movie, it turns out, was a macabre joke that could have come from an episode of The Outer Limits. “Imagine,” says Abrams’ co-writer, Clay Tarver, a Texas-born former musician. “Two guys are driving together on a remote highway. They’re having a good time when a voice comes over the CB saying, ‘You really should have that tail-light fixed’. The boys look around - and there’s no one there!”

No one there in the middle of nowhere may not sound like the perfect recipe for a road movie but, in Dahl’s hands and with a strong cast, Joy Ride brilliantly combines a sense of unease with a dash of black humour and the occasional shock.

“The humour results from the characters reacting to situations the way smart, real people do,” says Abrams, pointing out what makes the film different from generic teens-in-peril fare. “They don’t exist just to be killed, chased or threatened, as is the case in some thrillers. Our goal was to create a scenario and characters that you would want to follow in a drama or comedy, not just in a thriller.”

“Funny things can happen when you’re scared or placed in a frightening situation,” adds Tarver. “We tried to create smart, funny, self-deprecating characters who also provide some humour. Lewis and Fuller, for example, begin to bond as they drive across the country. And there are some hopefully funny things that result from this bonding.”

Where Joy Ride does follow a classic pattern, however, is in not revealing the identity - or even the appearance - of the trio’s nemesis, Rusty Nail. Like the truck-driver in Duel, he is a face never fully seen behind the reflections of the windscreen of his beat-up rig. “He could be anybody, and that makes him scarier,” says Dahl.

“Trucks can be like monsters on the road,” adds Sobieski. “Even in the middle of traffic, it can be intimidating when you’re driving a little car, and all of a sudden a huge truck comes up behind you.”

But this, of course, isn’t in traffic: it’s miles from anywhere in the badlands of Nevada. And, as Zahn laconically observes, it’s on the road where “different rules apply”.