Since a few decades, you can rely on the French if you seek brutal, perverted, and excessively violent backwoods horror! Of course, they're nearly not all as good as "Haute Tension", "Frontière(s)", and "Martyrs", but most still have that same raw & disturbing atmosphere and shocking gore. "Road Games" has a bit of intense atmosphere, but sorely disappoints when it comes to gore. Writer/director Pastoll goes for mystery and surprise twists instead, but his script isn't as unpredictable as he thinks.
The story opens with the young and British Jack hitchhiking on a remote backwoods French road on which there are signs warning drivers not to pick up hitchhikers. He meets the beautiful and adventurous Véronique, and they continue their trip together, until they are picked up by a friendly chap in an old junk car and taken to an isolated countryside mansion. The elderly host Grizar and his British-American wife Mary (Barbara Crampton) are suspiciously friendly and creepily hospitable, so experienced horror fanatics know what to expect. The next morning, Véronique has vanished, and Jack is treated a lot less warm and welcoming!
The twist at the end is clever, for sure, but not unique or super-intelligent, and it certainly doesn't justify the lack of action earlier in the film. If you pay attention to details and little human behaviors & interactions, you can anticipate the climax or at least feel less surprised when it comes. The weirdest thing about "Road Games" is the constant switching between the French and English language by three out of four of the lead characters. I speak French, so it didn't bother me too much, but I reckon it must be confusing and irritating when you don't. Barbara Crampton, the favorite starlet of every horror-loving male born between 1970 and 1990, also recites half of her lines in French, but she's completely incomprehensible. I don't know if she took French classes or learned her lines phonetically, but the pronunciation is abysmal.
