Mark Reviews Movies: RIDE (2018)

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 4, 2018

There's a neat conceit to Ride, writer/director Jeremy Ungar's debut feature. It's a thriller about a driver for a ridesharing company who picks up the wrong customer—wrong, both in terms of his identity and his basic nature. From there, the driver's morals are tested with an increasing sense of danger.

At least, that appears to be the theory behind Ungar's in-the-now story about the potential risks of technology. In practice, the movie rushes through its high-stakes mind game, evading the consequences of this long night and arriving at a conclusion that doesn't resolve anything.

The driver is James (Jessie T. Usher), a struggling actor, and his fare is Bruno (Will Brill). At first, their drive is innocent, with Bruno offering James cash, which he isn't supposed to accept, to take him around Los Angeles on various errands. We can sense something is amiss, because of a distant gunshot and the sudden appearance of blood on Bruno's shirt. Eventually, Bruno convinces James to pick up Jessica (Bella Thorne), a passenger from earlier in the night with whom James shared some chemistry.

Bruno is charming in an in-your-face sort of way, and Brill's performance provides a sense of chummy manipulation that gradually reveals itself to be the workings of a psychopath. Usher, too, is solid, as the sort of insecure guy who's suspicious of Bruno but, nonetheless, falls for his flattery and assertive advice.

When Bruno reveals his true self, though, the movie doesn't quite know what to do with the new information. With the help of a gun (which the villain cocks repeatedly, to the point that it's almost a joke), Bruno keeps the James and Jessica in the car. He makes the two dance in the streets. He forces James to rob a liquor store—an act that turns violent. Ungar would rather show off Bruno's insanity than confront the effect of that violence on his protagonist.

It is a tight, fast-paced thriller (running under 80 minutes), but with that haste comes an unfortunate lack of ultimate purpose. Ride is too broad to serve as a commentary on the potential dangers of sharing your car with strangers, but it doesn't get specific enough to make us truly worry or care about the physical and moral damage done to these characters.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products