Failing writer William Ash is in a failing relationship with cheating girlfriend Christine Bottomley and together they spend a long, bickering night on the road while he makes some extra change by putting up posters at petrol stations. Their pettier squabbles are put in perspective when, on the M1, Ash glimpses what appears to be a naked woman chained up in the back of a white truck immediately in front of them. The police can do nothing thanks to a mud-laden number plate and Ash ill-advisedly becomes fixated on finding out more about the truck and where it has gone. When Bottomley goes missing and is imperilled by the mysterious, murderous truck driver, he spends the rest of the rainy night in pursuit.

   Save for some uneven acting - especially at the start - this low-budget Yorkshire-filmed Brit thriller is an efficient UK appropriation of themes and scenes from numerous earlier American horrors like DUEL, JOYRIDE, THE HITCHER and JEEPERS CREEPERS. It’s lack of originality is its greatest flaw, though it’s unusual to have a horror picture with protagonists from England’s North and director Mark Tonderai cannily goads the audience to expect a second half detour into torture movie shenanigans - while refusing to bow to this expectation. The film’s only moments of graphic violence are well used : a startling eyeball stabbing and a nicely sadistic interlude in which our hero finds himself nailed by his hands to the floor.

  The emphasis is on sustained suspense rather than gross-out shock, and to its credit, the movie efficiently delivers : there are intense, relatively low-key scenes in a public toilet and at a farm with an apparently creepy old woman. The plot may run on very familiar ground but it achieves some neat misdirection as new members of its murderous conspiracy are revealed. And Ash makes for a refreshingly ordinary-bloke hero, reacting authentically to the escalating horrors rather than transforming into some kind of action hero to serve the story.

   It’s efficiently shot and paced and has no flab on its bones, though the ending is a tad disappointing - with a key villain killed by a heavy weight being dropped on him from above. Just like in cartoons. Minus the “acme” logo, though.