For the residents of Riverdale, life really is a highway... if only because, uh, lots of murders happen there.

Seven years after the gang's graduation from Riverdale High comes a brand-new murder mystery to solve — and this time, it's not so much about what happens in the town of Riverdale, as to what happens on the roads just outside of it. As we saw in the episode "Purgatorio" — the first episode of the new, soft rebooted Riverdale — a former waitress at Pop's Diner is killed after stopping a truck to hitchhike off the highway. With Jughead's narration introducing this as an element of Riverdale's brand-new mystery, the highway murders, it's worth wondering: Exactly what kind of darkness are we getting into this time?

According to showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's conversation with The Dipp, Season 5 of Riverdale is exploring a "different crime genre" this time around. While previous seasons have played homage to the Zodiac Killer and the so-called "Satanic Panic" surrounding Dungeons and Dragons, this season draws from a different, equally dark inspiration.

Aguirre-Sacasa explains, "One of the touchstones for this season are 'highway horror movies' like The Hitcher or Joyride or this French movie called High Tension, and even Jeepers Creepers and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

It's not just a change in movie inspiration that sets this murder mystery apart from previous seasons of Riverdale, though.