The Hitcher (1986)
The Hitcher is one of the greatest horror films ever made. It’s the story of Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) a young man transporting a car across the united states who, through simple bad luck, happens across the path of a serial killer named John Ryder (Rutger Hauer). Jim manages to outfox Ryder and escape unharmed but that’s just the beginning as Ryder follows him across the wastes of West Texas, framing him for various murders and hunting him like an animal all to force a confrontation between them again.
The Hitcher is a masterpiece of suspense and Rutger Hauer gives the best performance of his career as the chillingly evil John Ryder. The film serves as the ultimate anti-slasher with the killing spree serving as table-setting for the clash between the killer and the victim who got away, sort of a Halloween if it was only focused on the story of Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis. It’s also one of the few movies to have an antagonist who is not just physically but sexually threatening to its male lead, the movie isn’t so shallow as to have John try to sexually assault Jim but Ryder seems to take a certain amount of glee in being flirtatious in his torment to Jim and Jim’s revulsion at this is notably outsized. What this all means about the sexuality of either men has been hotly debated by fans of this film since its release but the homoerotic subtext and how it informs the threat of John Ryder to Jim is one of the reasons he’s such an effective antagonist.
Ryder himself is a seemingly supernatural force, not dissimilar from No Country For Old Men’s Anton Chigurh, he is a frighteningly capable killer and only seems to be able to be defeated because he wants to be stopped. Many of the reviews at the time of the film’s release complained about Ryder’s unknown motives, but while his origins remain a mystery his motives are very clear. He wants to meet someone who’s good enough to stop him, it doesn’t appear to be out of guilt or out of some suicidal ideation, he wants to meet his match and die at their hands.
Jennifer Jason Leigh and C. Thomas Howell hold their own against Rutger Hauer’s excellent performance and the interplay between these three characters is what really makes this movie special. It remains a crime that this movie hasn’t had a curated special-edition blu-ray release.
The Hitcher (2007)
The Hitcher (2007) concerns Jim Halsey (Zachary Knighton) and his girlfriend Grace (Sophia Bush) as they head to San Antonio for Spring Break. On the way they pick up John Ryder (Sean Bean) who tries to kill them and they manage to barely escape with their lives only to be dogged by Ryder as they try and get somewhere safe. He frames them for various murders and hunts them like animals.
Is it a good remake?
Not even a little bit. When it tries to pay homage to the original movie it only highlights its own shortcomings and when it tries to do its own thing it fails at that too. Let’s start with the biggest issue right off the bat. I’m not expecting Sean Bean to be Rutger Hauer but his John Ryder just doesn’t, there’s no subtext to this version of the character, any sexual threat the character poses to our characters is right out there in the open, he’s vulgar and brutish where Hauer was cold and aloof. Sean Bean is an excellent actor but he’s chewing on what sounds like a slight Texas accent here and it just saps all the nuance and emotional depth out of his performance.
Next we have Jim, the lynchpin of the original film (more on that in a moment), Jim made a lot of mistakes in the original movie but he was always resourceful and clever. Jim here is a complete dummy and a bit of a pathetic person, which the movie admittedly calls out, I think the idea is to flip the script and make the male protagonist have the weak traditionally feminine role and make the female lead the smart capable one. The thing is, Grace is pretty dumb too, she’s just a bit cooler under pressure. Spoilers for both versions of the movie to follow.
In the original film, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character dies going into the third act when John Ryder captures her at a truckstop motel and ties her between the trailer hitch and a trailer and a big rig and pulls her in half in a ploy to get Jim to take action and kill him. I can understand the instinct to flip the script on this just to surprise the audience who is expecting Grace to die and to subvert the trope of the woman’s death serving to push the man into action.
But the reason that that moment in the original film is so effective is because Leigh’s character Nash is so fleshed out and human in spite of the fact that she doesn’t come in until the halfway point. Her death does push Jim toward taking care of Ryder himself but it’s not at the expense of the character herself. The moment works because it feels real and tragic, and Jim maybe be pushed to action by this moment but it’s a natural progression from where he has gone in the story and the chemistry between Nash and himself. Nash’s death hurts and you don’t even see anything.
Conversely, when the remake flips the script and I saw Jim get pulled into two pieces in full gory detail, I felt nothing. Jim is poorly fleshed out and Grace is so frustratingly generic that she barely reads as a human being. The film-makers seem to be approaching the movie from a more ostensibly feminist angle but it’s all surface and no depth. When Grace kills John at the end of the movie it doesn’t have one tenth of the power of Jim killing him in the original movie.
For the most part the remake seems to be doing a pretty solid remake of the garbage direct-to-video sequel The Hitcher 2: I’ve Been Waiting with Jake Busey as a different but equally murderous hitchhiker and C. Thomas Howell returning to die before the third act so his under-written girlfriend can take over the hero role for some cheap girl power imagery.
Does it stand on its own?
I’m not going to say the movie’s a total wash. For a 2000s era horror thriller it’s passable, the performers are making the best out of the very little they’re given, the movie is suitably gruesome and while the tension cannot and does not compare to the original there’s some effective moments.
With that said the music cues are aweful, most notably the scene where John kills a whole bunch of cops and takes down a helicopter (admittedly one of the more ridiculous scenes from the original movie) is set to Closer by Nine Inch Nails and the movie opens to an All American Rejects song. It’s got all the things everyone hates about Platinum Dunes movies and none of the things some people like.
If you can only watch one 2000s-era road-killer movie with a cast of actors slumming it then see Joy Ride with Steve Zahn and Paul Walker or Highwaymen with Jim Caviezel and Rhona Mitra, which is incidently directed by the guy who did the original The Hitcher.
Watch, Toss, or Buy?
Do what the rest of the world has done and forget this movie ever happened.