Stars: Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Zachary Knighton
Where: Emprie Capitol 6, SilverCity
The movies love serial killers mostly because they kill serially, which is a very visual concept.
In The Hitcher, the remake of a 1986 thriller, the killer is a hitchhiker named John Ryder, who kills because, as far as you can tell, it says to in the script.
"You're a smart kid, you can figure it out," Ryder says at one point, but by the end of The Hitcher, it appears this particular serial killer went on his murder spree because he wouldn't have been much of a killer if he didn't.
Ryder is played by Sean Bean, whom you will remember as Boromir in The Lord of the Rings, and he brings a grizzled sense of menace that nonetheless does nothing to elucidate what is essentially 85 minutes of pointless mayhem.
He's first seen on the side of a highway in a teeming rainstorm trying to get a lift from Grace and Jim (Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton), two attractive but undistinguished college students (played by two attractive but undistinguished actors) off on a spring break bachaanal.
Ryder, who soon reveals himself to be the World's Worst Hitchhiker, gets into the car and immediately begins menacing Grace and Jim with a knife.
They dodge him, but he keeps reappearing, sort of like a bad case of stomach flu, leering at them from the back seat of a family station wagon that has a Honk If You Love Jesus bumper sticker, just to make the impending bloodshed even more gruesome, and later in gory crime scenes at a police station, at the site of one of the movie's several car chase sequences, and other spots in picturesque New Mexico.
Not only that, but Grace and Jim keep driving through areas where their cellphones won't work, which is the official danger sign of the madman on the loose.
There's a bit of tension in this: Grace and Jim are forever hiding in abandoned sheds or checking into a motel that seems to have modelled itself on several Alfred Hitchcock films (blood running down the drain in the shower, The Birds on TV), while the Here He Comes music cranks up and we wait for the serial killing to resume.
However, this is balanced by a mounting irritation with the college students, who seem to be majoring in Bad Decisions. I mean, would you have a shower in a spooky motel if Sean Bean were after you with a knife?
The updated script for The Hitcher converts the dreamy qualities of the original, which had Rutger Hauer chasing C.
Thomas Howell, with Jennifer Jason Leigh as a late arrival, into more of a bloody love story, but it doesn't make much more sense in this version.
It's a first film from director Dave Meyers, who is yet another music video-and commercial-maker -- how many of these guys are there? -- and he showcases a style that appears to be comprised of music videos, commercials and earlier serial killer films.
The one distinguishing mark comes in the first scene of a bunny rabbit hopping across a southwestern highway, to be squashed by a passing car. Why? You're a smart kid.
You can figure it out.
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