Title: Ride or Die
Director: Josalynn Smith
Starring: Briana Middleton, Stella Everett, Cody Kostro
Runtime: 1 hr 25 mins

What It Is: A casual reunion with her high school crush takes an unexpected turn when two young women embark on a high‑stakes road trip with an uncertain destination.

What We Think: Ride or Die is aptly named—once the ride stops, it dies. As we barrel through the rural U.S., everything from love and sensuality to grit and terror tumbles into the path of our two incredible leads, Briana Middleton and Stella Everett. The film opens with a humble small-town beginning, giving us a sense of who these characters are (and who they used to be) before they’re thrust into their cross-country journey. The standout moment is an intensely intimate scene where you can almost feel the breath of the characters amidst the dust in the room.

Be prepared to get up close and personal with the film’s engrossing central relationship (though I must also mention a fantastically unnerving scene featuring Cody Kostro as a Midwestern burnout). Director Josalynn Smith handles these types of moments with skill throughout. The screenplay starts off strong and maintains solid momentum—until a certain point, which we’ll get to in a moment.

Aside from the performances and one-on-one scenes, one of the film’s greatest strengths is its detailed, thoughtful sound design, paired with colorful and intensely explorative cinematography. Together, they highlight the film’s best features: its landscapes and its actors.

Briana Middleton’s doe-eyed Paula, who begins her journey on an awkward foot, finds the perfect counterpart in Stella Everett’s alluring Sloane. As the road exposes them to new experiences, Paula gradually matures while Sloane’s path takes a different turn. The chemistry between these two is phenomenal—if the script loses you, their connection certainly won’t. Neither outshines the other: Middleton captures your heart from her first scene, and the same can be said for Everett. They are two equal halves of a whole.

Now, the film has been marketed as a road trip/revenge story, but the “revenge” element is barely touched on and arrives so suddenly that it feels like an undesirable detour. Instead of delivering the slow burn and escalation you’d expect from a revenge plot, everything comes to a grinding halt. There are plenty of thrills and emotional beats on the open road, but once this twist arrives, it feels rushed. A few extra minutes would have gone a long way, because ultimately, it feels like the film takes a shortcut instead of embracing the longer, scenic route.

Our Grade: B-, Strengthened by two engrossing performances from Briana Middleton and Stella Everett, Josalynn Smith’s Ride or Die is a thrilling, sexy debut—even if the pacing gets a little too wild and the twists a little too tight.