Unspeakable Horror!

Another day, another horror remake. It’s one of those periods in horror cinema you wish would just pass already or at least hope someone would do something mind-blowing (think John Carpenter’s The Thing redo). While I remain guardedly hopeful that the latter will come via Rob Zombie’s controversial Halloween re-imagining later this summer, right now we’re left to sift through remakes like The Hitcher.

From the outset, The Hitcher has a lot of things stacked against it. From its opening scenes, the film promises to insult the audience with a precursory statistical announcement that 48,000 people die every year on highways. That ominous assertion is followed quickly by a gory CGI-shot of a cute bunny becoming road kill, which is in turn followed by another hokey CGI-generated dragonfly being splattered across a windshield. We get it – there’s a lot of death on highways. So much for subtlety and understated foreshadowing. Strike two comes when the lone driver of the original is replaced with a couple – cute college love bunnies en route to spring break frivolity via the desolate expanse of macadam stretching across the New Mexico dessert. This is also the point where screenwriter Jake Wade Wall’s otherwise tight update of Eric Red’s 1986 screenplay loses its key element of queer subtext - substituting the ambiguous homoerotic tension between the alpha male psychopath and male victim of the original for generic boy-girl rote.

You can almost hear the collective groans of jaded horror aficionados when they first glimpse Grace (Sophia Bush of TV’s One Tree Hill) sprinting across the screen in all of her WB/CW glory, late for departure on her road trip with boyfriend Jim (Zachary Knighton of the 2000 virgins-as-victims slasher entry Cherry Falls and TV’s short-lived Life on a Stick). Before the discouraging mental image of Tom Welling and Maggie Grace in The Fog even has time to form in your mind, the collegiate lovebirds are zooming toward the open road in Jim’s vintage 1970 Oldsmobile 442 and the banal banter can commence. Horror films seem to latch onto certain settings during its various cycles – how many can actually count the glut of summer camp-set slashers common to the 80’s and 90’s? The Hitcher has the unfortunate timing to be among horror’s new crop of similarly set dessert road movies – The Hills Have Eyes, Wolf Creek, both of the recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre films – and therefore the audience is predisposed to a premise that’s already tired just in terms of where the action takes place. Been there (literally) and done that.

Finally, nightfall and torrential rain arrive, and the titular character makes an effective entrance. It’s here that the film takes a surprising turn for the better, and Wall updates his script with some modern sensibilities and realistic cautions that bode well for believability – at least for a while. After nearly running down the enigmatic hitchhiker, seen first in creepy, rain soaked shadows in the rearview mirror, Grace has the good sense to forbid Jim from offering help to what appears to be a stranded motorist. After all, you don’t pick up strangers in the middle of the dessert on a rainy night. Refreshingly sage advice indeed from a sub-genre stock character not known for keen bouts of instinct until after the first chainsaw rips. After a clichéd sequence in which the car won’t turn over as the shadowed stranger approaches, the couple leaves the nebulous motorist standing in the rain, assuaging their guilt by promising to call for help. Well, viewers know darn well that cell phones never seem to work when you need them most, so it’s not until miles later when they pull into a roadside convenience store that they can make good on their promise.

As fate would have it, the mysterious John Ryder (veteran English actor Sean Bean of The Lord of the Rings films and 2006’s Silent Hill) arrives at the rest stop right behind them on a tractor-trailer nice enough to actually stop for him. An awkward reunion between Jim and Ryder ensues, and during good-sense-Grace’s umpteenth restroom absence, Jim caves in to Ryder’s gracious dismissal of the couple’s abandonment and agrees top give the pearly white-smiled stranger a ride into the next town. Grace is not happy, and in an unintentionally comical moment, huffily sulks in the backseat with her iPod blaring. We forgive her this teen petulance because the terror that quickly unfolds would have been avoided had Jim heeded her earlier advice. With little build-up, Ryder makes his malevolent intentions known to the hapless couple with one deliciously demented snap of a cell phone. From there, it’s cat-and-mouse all the way to the finish line, with mistaken identities, gory kills, and car-crash thrills aplenty.

Newbie director Dave Myers (a veteran music video director whose sole film credit was 1999’s Master P concert video/comedy-drama Foolish) takes Wall’s tightly plotted script and creates an action-packed ride for the audience filled with suspense, albeit heavily steeped in clichés at times. With juggernaut producer Michael Bay behind the project, one would guess that Myers had all the right resources at his disposal to move beyond the Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and Creed videos he was known for prior to this film. He is aided greatly by the first-rate camera work of cinematographer James Hawkinson, who clearly knows his way around a slick action sequence. Although there are the usual suspensions of disbelief required of the audience, the film stays plausible enough to keep us engaged. The cast remains a notch above B-grade, especially Bean who creates a very different John Ryder than Rutger Hauer in the original. Where Hauer played his John Ryder with gleefully demented over-the-top abandon, creating an unpredictable madman, Bean plays it closer to the bone, imbuing the new-and-improved John Ryder with an aura of predictable enigma. Bean’s performance is refreshingly low-key in a genre that has embraced excess in its latest cycle of popularity. Bush and Knighton are formidable enough victims, if ultimately forgettable in the end. The underrated (and disarmingly blue-eyed) Neal McDonough (of Minority Report and Flags of Our Fathers) adds another impressive character role to his resume with his portrayal of Lieutenant Esteridge, which he plays to full advantage as a stereotypical southwestern lawman – cowboy hat and all.

There’s also the requisite tongue-in-cheek inside nods to trivia-loving genre fans. Director Myers actually appears in the film – as the photo on the real John Ryder’s driver license. And if you think shots of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds playing in the background during the motel scenes are random, think again. This is a clever teaser of producer Bay’s own spin on the classic 1963 nature-run-amok landmark, currently in development at his Platinum Dunes production company and rumored to be starring Naomi Watts in the Tippi Hedren role. If you think the backlash over Zombie’s upcoming Halloween is big, just wait until this one goes into active production!

In the end, moviegoers may find themselves mildly surprised at how much they get caught up in the fast-paced action, perhaps overlooking comparisons to the original. I suspect that this new Hitcher may find its ultimate success on the shelves of video stores and during late-night cable showings, much in the same way the original has slowly earned modest cult-favorite status. Definitely worth the price of matinee on a cold winter afternoon, The Hitcher stands out slightly from the meager offerings of big-screen killer crocs and direct-to-DVD disasters currently available.

Rating: 6 out of 10 butcher knives