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Printer-Friendly ModeBean not enough to save Hitcher from plot, cliches
January 22, 2007 —
Recent times have seen Hollywood take a verbal lashing for being sparse on original ideas. Whether that is the case or Tinseltown is simply afraid to green-light projects that veer from proven money-making formulas can be debated.
With The Hitcher, a new spin on the 1986 original, audiences get another remake that fails to justify its existence.
Zachary Knighton and Sophia Bush serve as the film's heroes, Jim and Grace, an alteration from the original which had just one main protagonist.
Knighton and Bush play college students who cross paths with a disturbing hitchhiker, John Ryder (Sean Bean), en route to a spring break destination in New Mexico.
The couple assumes they're rid of Ryder following a near-death altercation, but of course if that were the case, there would be no movie, which may not have been such a bad thing.
Ryder resurfaces, frames the couple for a gruesome family slaying and then proceeds to put any GPS tracking device to shame by showing up every single place the lovebirds go.
In one segment that almost borders on parody, he somehow manages to acquire a spiffy black Camaro in the middle of the New Mexico desert and catch up to Jim and Grace, who are being chased by no less than five police cars and a helicopter.
Almost effortlessly, Ryder is able to take out the cop cars and the helicopter with a combination of his handgun and reckless driving. All of this is set to Nine Inch Nails' "Closer." See why there just had to be a remake?
Moving past some of the absurd scenarios, Bean is one of The Hitcher's few bright spots. Genuinely unsettling thanks to his facial expressions and lethargic speech pattern, he makes the most of the material shot his way.
It's not enough to make the film work for more than a few scattered minutes, though, especially when his motive is little more than transparently defined.
Reasoning behind his actions appear to be forthcoming during the climax. Instead, we get more over-the-top sequences that suggest college students have the ability to be trapped within a vehicle engulfed in flames and escape without a scratch.
Although a better fallout wouldn't have saved The Hitcher, some sense of fulfillment could have been reached. Its ending almost makes it seem like someone forgot to write one and it had to be done on the fly.
Even at 83 minutes, it tends to drag, mostly from a thin script that offers us little reason to care what happens to the protagonists. Only the basics are known about the prominent characters, which saps the suspenseful moments. But then, who watches horror movies for character development?
There's a hearty share of gore, although the majority of the violence occurs off-camera. If only more of The Hitcher had been left off-camera.