The Hitcher (2007)
Cast: Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Zachary Knighton
Director: Dave Meyers
Writer: Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall
Producer: Michael Bay
Runtime: 1hr 25 Minutes approx.
Age Rating: 15
Plot - While driving across the
desert, two college students
pick up a hitchhiker who turns
out to be a murderous
psychopath. After ditching him
the hiker follows them and a
dangerous and bloody game
of cat-and-mouse ensues.
Review: By Ross Miller
Blockbuster season is well underway and in the midst of all those big budget, big name films emerges a small, under-the-radar type thriller/horror called The Hitcher. I saw the trailer and thought this film looked pretty good but I could tell that it wasn’t going to be anything special. And although this film won’t be winning any Oscars and it certainly won’t be raved about by many critics I still quite enjoyed myself.
This film is a remake of the 1986 film of the same name. The title character in the original was played, excellently I’m told, by Rutger Hauer. But to update things just a bit for the modern audience they opt to use Sean Bean in the role. And I must say for what the role is Bean does an excellent
job. The role of a crazed, psychopath hitchhiker
demands something from an actor. It demands a
certain edge, a certain tension that needs to be very
apparent even with no dialogue and even with no
on-screen appearance. Bean does a fine job in
accomplishing what was intended, he is appropriately
creepy while still not entering full on horror territory
of just going over the top. The thing I admired about
the title character, and come to think of it the film
in general, is how realistic a lot of it was. Now I
know after a lot of people watch it they will think that statement is crazy. But although it may not be realistic for this man to be able to catch up with this couple so quickly, and manage to appear wherever they go (and also managing to get the upper hand over a lot of people, including cops), it didn’t enter the territory of being completely silly. Usually in a film of this nature, there are always tons of completely unbelievable plot twists, the killer murdering people in very unrealistic ways and just certain things happening when in reality they would absolutely never. The film felt real, felt believable in the way this killer was going about doing things and how this young couple was reacting. And although you can sit there as an audience member thinking that you’d do things completely differently to get this killer once and for all, when you realistically look at it from the young couple’s point of view you would probably end up doing the exact same things.
Now I am not saying this is the best film ever or anything, I am just simply defending things about it that need to be as I know a lot of people will try to bash the film for some of those very reasons. The film does have a lot of weaknesses, which is what I expected. First of all it is a bit formulaic in the way everything plays out. The plot of two people out in the middle of nowhere being attacked by some sort of killer or stalker has been done before a million times and this is just an attempt to put a different spin on it. But unfortunately the film plays out pretty much as you’d expect it to, in other words the film is
very predictable. Every single time they get away from
the hitcher, obviously you know right off the bat that
he is going to catch up to them that he is going to try
and keep killing them. I know without this there would
be nothing happening on screen as the film is about
exactly what the title says, so I guess you have to
forgive it for being about them being chased and
terrorized constantly. But the problem is the film just
keeps repeating that same routine over and over.
They get chased and terrorized by the hitcher, then they get away, then he catches up and they get chased and terrorized again. A lot of people get killed in the process, they get away and the same thing happens over and over for pretty much the entire movie. But for what that is it’s pretty entertaining, I had a lot of fun trying to guess when the killer was going to turn up again, trying to guess where and when he would appear out of nowhere. And it’s within those scenes that the films strengths come from, some of the scenes are very jumpy. Not all of them, some that were intended to make you jump were timed a bit wrongly but for the most part you will catch yourself jumping quite a few times. The aforementioned chase and escape routine that gets old after a while isn’t that much of a problem since the film has a fairly short runtime, but any longer and it just would have felt like overkill.
Overtime
This was a nice little film that gave me a break from all the blockbusters that are swarming the cinemas around this time. It has a few jumpy moments and tension filled chase scenes that should keep you entertained for its runtime. It’s pretty formulaic stuff but every once in a while, if you just run with it, that can be pretty entertaining in it’s own right.
