Big Driver

Big Driver follows Tess Thorne, a successful mystery novelist returning home from a promotional tour. Advised to take a shortcut through a remote stretch of New England, she is stranded by a flat tyre and accepts help from a stranger who stops to assist her. The encounter turns violent: the man attacks and rapes her, leaving her for dead. Tess survives, and rather than leave matters to the police, she sets out to find him and settle the score herself. The film is based on a Stephen King novella.

Mikael Salomon directed this 2014 television film, the fifth feature in a run that includes Hard Rain, Fallen, The Lost Future and Blue Lagoon: The Awakening. Maria Bello plays Tess, with Ann Dowd as Ramona, Will Harris as Lester, Joan Jett as Betsy Neal, Olympia Dukakis as Doreen and Jennifer Kydd as Patsy. Made for television by HBO Films and Lifetime, it runs 87 minutes.

Reception was mixed. On IMDb it holds 5.7 out of 10 from around 7,300 votes, and on TMDB it also sits at 5.7, from roughly 235 votes. A smaller pool of critics rated it 6 out of 10 across ten reviews, placing it close to the audience scores. The low vote counts on TMDB relative to IMDb indicate a modest international footprint for this small-screen thriller.