Theme: Road Movies

Road Movies are a phenomenon that emerged in the US, although variants have been found in the cinema of most other cultures. In the road movie, usually two characters set out on a journey by car across country. The journey becomes a picaresque where they engage in assorted mini-adventures that usually have a transformational experience. This can be an experience that causes characters to loosen up, expand their perspective, or where opposites attract or become best buddies by the end of the journey. The purpose of the journey can be to get somewhere, deliver a package, make a pilgrimage, visit someone/thing, escape from a mundane life in search of something other, or else the protagonists can be outlaws on the run.

Genre cinema has added a number of spins to this. SF films often features journeys across post-apocalyptic or socially collapsing worlds. One SF variant on the outlaw journey will where one member among the group is an individual who can be an alien or someone with a unique power (who can be pursued by people wanting to obtain that). In fantasy cinema, the journey is an allegorical and quite frequently a surreal one, often becoming quite dark and disturbed.

In horror cinema, the protagonists are frequently pursued by psychopathic or supernatural nemeses. Steven Spielberg’s
Duel (1971) created the trope of motorists pursued by malevolent vehicles. Equally, it can also be a game of cat and mouse with a killer on the road, or where the killer is a passenger in the car.