As remakes go, The Hitcher retains enough of the original concept to make it an enjoyable movie, with plenty of car chases, crashes, and creepy scenes to make 84 minutes fly by. Like the original, which came out in 1986, this remake keeps the main characters few and the frights many.
The movie starts with a stat sure to grab anyone who likes a good road trip: 42,000 people are killed every year on the highway, this according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
When college couple Grace Andrews (played by Sophia Bush, star of One Tree Hill and ex-wife of OTH co-star Chad Michael Murray) and Jim Halsey (played by Zachary Knighton, who has a handful of television and movie credits to his name) head to Lake Havasu for spring break, everything’s fine until, during a rainstorm, they almost run down a man standing in the middle of the road next to what appears to be a broken down car.
The man turns out to be John Ryder, a.k.a. The Hitcher (played by Sean Bean, who had turns in Silent Hill, Flightplan, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy). While Rutger Hauer, who played the original hitcher, was creepy, Bean is downright maniacal.
After an encounter with a farmer-tanned store clerk who regales the couple with a story about trying to milk a donkey, the pair gives Ryder a ride, and he, in turn, gives them the ride of their life. Following the plot of the original, Ryder implicates them in a horrific slaying, then alternates between stalking and taunting them.
The main issues I had with the movie, and which I have with most films, is that the psycho is always a great shot while no one else is, and the psycho’s always indestructible (at first, anyway). Also, just a tip — when a psycho killer is after you, stay out in the open. If you run into a ramshackle building, you can’t see him, thus giving said psycho the advantage.
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