A boy in a yellow jacket appears injured as he runs for his life through the woods before falling to his knees and breaking down in despair.
Five teens – Nolan, Bess, Reggie, Queenie and Karl – are going on a field trip with their bus driver Joseph.
Karl teases Queenie, while it appears that Nolan likes Bess, and Reggie just sits in the back scowling.
Joseph gives the teens a riddle to solve to pass the time, involving seven letters and being a much-needed virtue.
The lights in the tunnel suddenly go out, leaving everything in pitch black darkness, save for the bus headlights illuminating an odd shape in the road which Pedro forces Joseph to inspect.
Once he gets close enough, the thing reveals itself to be a monstrous creature that rises and kills Joseph, to the horror of the teens.
The monster (which looks like a giant bug with sharp teeth and long hair) rips out the wiring on the bus and hops on board, but the teens manage to escape.
It belonged to a man named Giulio Sarpi, who, in 1971, lost his younger sister Isabella to the monster (he was the boy seen in the film’s opening).
Their voiceover narration reveals that they solved the answer to Joseph’s riddle – it was courage, which is what it took for them to work together and escape.
The site's consensus reads, "This road trip horror outing may take one Shortcut too many to count as a truly satisfying journey, but refreshing brevity and a show-don't-tell approach smooth the ride.
"[8] Courtney Howard for Variety wrote, "If only someone had course-corrected the filmmakers on their own route to making this letdown of a horror road-movie, which gets off to a good start before losing its way.