JESSIE REIMER
Staff Writer
“The Hitcher” joins an array of classic horror movie remakes that fail horribly in a sad attempt to rekindle the magic of something that just is not that scary anymore. Following recent horror movie re-make protocol, “The Hitcher” strips away the mystery of the original, much like its fellow protégé films “The Fog” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
The movie opens with a statistic stating that 42,000 people are killed on highways each year, perhaps as a cheap ploy to make us all afraid to drive on the highway. That does not fly in a world where most drivers use highway travel more than once every day. While the number is true, the statistic fails to mention that those thousands are killed in car crashes, not by maniac hitchhikers.
Feeding into classic cliché horror film foreshadowing, a poorly computer-generated bunny crosses the highway in the first scene, but is ripped to shreds beneath a passing car. A dragonfly to the windshield repeats the same foreboding effect only moments later.
The beginning credits of the film scroll to the upbeat and inspirational song “Move Along” by the All-American Rejects. The song sets up the film with a contradicting tone that appallingly bypasses the eerie presence of a horror film. This error in musical choice is especially shocking because Dave Meyers, a big name music video director who has directed more than 100 videos, directed “The Hitcher.”
Based on the 1986 film of the same name written by Eric Red, the remake follows a college couple on their way to Lake Havasu for spring break. Jim, played by relative newcomer Zachary Knighton, and Grace, played by “One Tree Hill’s” Sophia Bush, drive along the winding, deserted roads of a New Mexico interstate and almost hit a shadowed figure standing in the middle of the highway. The couple does not pick up the stranger at first, but after meeting him up the road at a local gas station, he ends up in the car, and he happens to be a psychotic killer.
British actor and Hollywood regular, Sean Bean, plays the killer, who claims the name John Ryder. If the movie accomplished one thing that exceeded expectations, it was casting Bean as the villain. His character portrayal is indeed truly creepy. Not to mention that a killer with no identity and seemingly no purpose in killing people is just a frightening concept.
Bush made a surprisingly decent attempt at playing the heroine of the film. She took a hiatus from her role as Brooke Davis on the popular CW show, “One Tree Hill,” to film “The Hitcher,” her second horror flick. Last year, she played October in the video-game-turned-death-trap horror film, “Stay Alive.” Her performance held strong up until the last scene where she poorly resembled a “Resident Evil”-style Milla Jovovich aspirant.
Although picking up a hitchhiker in every day life could potentially be a real problem, people are smarter these days, and the film subsequently lacks concrete and believable conflicts (as with most horror films). It is an endless cycle of a miraculous escape of the pursued followed by a phenomenal reappearance of the pursuer. The killer attempts to frame his victims with his ridiculously sick and twisted crimes.
The movie was deemed so close to the original that Red was awarded screenwriting credit in the film. However, as a remake, “The Hitcher” falls into an unfortunate category of predictability. The film does not surprise viewers or leave them in suspense because it has already been done. The recent trend of horror film remakes leaves filmmakers clutching desperately to the not-so-scary-anymore films of the past.
In one scene, the film alludes to classic cult horror films as Bush’s character watches Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” on a motel television. It seems unwise to draw attention to a cult-horror classic film while remaking a classic horror film.
It is hard to believe that the world of modern-day writers has run out of new and creative ways to scare people. The world of horror films has to do better than mediocre remakes like “The Hitcher.”
01-25-2007