17 Road Trip Horror Movies to Watch Before Going on Your Summer Vacation
“I need to remind you of a little movie called Deliverance.”
Road trips remove us from the safety of our homes and take us out into the unknown. These horror movies depict all kinds of ways an idyllic road trip can go wrong. From wrong turns to meeting evil on the road to ending up at a sinister destination — these are the best road trip horror movies. Make sure to watch them before you make your own car trip this summer.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
A classic road-trip-gone-wrong horror movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre begins with a group of friends driving their van through Texas to check on the grave of Sally and Franklin Hardesty’s grandfather, which has been vandalized. Along the way they pick up a frightening hitchhiker who leads the group to his “whole family of vampires.” Bookending this road-trip horror movie is the famous final scene of TCM in which Sally becomes a hitchhiker and rides away in the back of a truck, screaming.
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Written and directed by horror master Wes Craven, The Hills Have Eyes follows the Carter family as they take a road trip to Los Angeles. In Nevada, the family crashes and their dog runs off and is found mutilated. The group learns that there is a family of cannibalistic psychopaths who live in the hills and cannibalize travelers as they pass through the area.
Tourist Trap (1979)
A group of friends traveling through the desert get stranded at a malevolent tourist trap in this supernatural slasher movie. While the proprietor “helps” the gang with one of their vehicles, the group explores a waxwork museum and one of the girls is strangled by an unseen entity and turned into a mannequin. The rest of the group tries to outsmart a masked killer and mannequins that come alive to find their way back to the highway and survive.
Motel Hell (1980)
Motel Hell is a low-budget horror comedy about a sadistic family of cannibals who operate “Motel Hello.” Farmer Vincent Smith and his sister Ida trap motorists to harvest them and sell human meat at their motel. When Farmer Vincent kills a woman’s boyfriend, she recovers at the hotel and eventually agrees to marry him.
Children Of The Corn (1984)
Vicky and Burt are driving through Nebraska on their way to Seattle when they hit a child who has run into the road; they seek help in a small town called Gatlin. They find that the town has been abandoned for three years and is now run by a cult of creepy children. Led by a boy named Isaac, the children worship a corn god they call He Who Walks Behind the Rows.
The Hitcher (1986)
The Hitcher is a road thriller and a cult classic about a man named Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) who is driving a car from Chicago to San Diego. Bored on the long road trip, he picks up a hitchhiker in West Texas. The hitcher (Rutger Hauer) says his name is John Ryder and pulls out a knife before threatening Jim in a very memorable scene. Jim is able to force the hitcher out of his car, and a cat-and-mouse game ensues. The Hitcher was remade in 2007.
The Vanishing (1988)
A woman disappears at a gas station during a road trip with her boyfriend. For three years he searches relentlessly for her, even appearing on TV to appeal to her kidnapper. Finally the kidnapper makes contact and says he will reveal the missing woman’s fate, but only if her boyfriend will agree to experience the answer firsthand.
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Inspired by a true story shown on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, Trish and Darry Jenner are a brother and sister traveling home from college on a road trip when they have a creepy encounter with the driver of a dilapidated old truck. Later, they happen upon the driver and it looks like he is disposing bodies into a pipe. The siblings decide to investigate and learn that they have stumbled upon a supernatural killer. Unfortunately, the killer notices the two poking around and becomes intent on chasing them down.
Joy Ride (2001)
Brothers Lewis (Paul Walker) and Fuller (Steve Zahn) Thomas are driving from Salt Lake City home to their parents. To make the road trip more interesting, Fuller installs a CB radio in the car, and the two play a cruel prank on a trucker who goes by the name “Rusty Nail” before picking up Lewis’s crush, Venna (Leelee Sobieski), in Colorado. The brothers learn that they messed with the wrong trucker when Rusty Nail comes after them and reveals he has kidnapped Venna’s friend Charlotte.
Dead End (2003)
A horror movie about a family driving together on Christmas Eve who take a shortcut through the woods. The shortcut takes them on a never-ending road. They meet a woman in white with a baby and attempt to give her a ride to a nearby house. It’s not until the family separates that she reveals the baby she is carrying is actually dead.
House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
A group of friends take a road trip on Halloween eve hoping to write a book about creepy roadside attractions. The gang is lured to the Firefly residence by Baby Firefly posing as a hitchhiker. They are treated to a Halloween show by the family before the real show begins.
Wrong Turn (2003)
Wrong Turn is a slasher film following two groups of people who were on a road trip and end up stranded on a West Virginia back road. Medical student Chris Flynn (Desmond Harrington) and a group of friends including Jessie Burlingame (Eliza Dushku) figure out that they’ve been sabotaged and are being hunted down by a group of inbred mountain people. Together the group tries to outsmart the skilled hunters and make it back to civilization. Wrong Turn is very loosely based on the “true story” of Sawney Bean.
Wolf Creek (2005)
Wolf Creek follows three travelers on a road trip across the Australian Outback. After stopping at the Wolf Creek Crater, the site of an ancient meteorite impact, the trio returns to their car to find the battery dead. A stranger appears in the darkness to offer his help, and it turns out he is a sadistic psychopath who drugs and tortures his prey.
Vacancy (2007)
A bickering couple, David (Luke Wilson) and Amy Fox (Kate Beckinsale), on a road trip to a family party experience car trouble and decide to pull into a roadside motel for the night. Once inside, they discover snuff films in the hotel room’s VHS collection that appear to have been made in that very room. When the couple tries to escape, masked men appear outside and the couple realizes that they are trapped in a snuff film of their own.
Windchill (2007)
Two college students (Ashton Holmes and Emily Blunt) share a ride home from school on a holiday break. When the car breaks down in a snowy and isolated area, the students worry about their safety. However, the appearance of other spirits who have lost their lives on the road appear and make the situation much more terrifying.
Road Games (2015)
Road Games is a scary and violent French mystery thriller about a British hitchhiker named Jack who meets a French hitchhiker named Véronique. The two decide to travel together for safety as there is a serial killer on the loose in the area. A man named Grizard stops and offers the two a ride and upon learning Jack is English, invites them to dinner to meet his English wife. After dinner, Grizard is reluctant to let the couple go and insists they spend the night.
Alone (2020)
Jessica is a single woman traveling alone, trying to deal with her husband’s recent death by suicide. On the road, she keeps encountering a strange man whose attention she rebuffs. When Jessica is in a car accident (due to her vehicle being sabotaged), the man abducts her and holds her hostage at his cabin where he reveals she is not the first woman he has abducted.
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